A Voyage Long and Strange
by labonsoirfemme
Summary: Bulma's Ph.Ds had not prepared her in the slightest for navigating the political intrigues aboard Frieza's ship, much less her own sham of a marriage to Prince Vegeta. Canon Divergence. Rated M for crude language and adult themes.
1. Chapter 1

It's been a long time since I've written anything other than academic papers, so this project has so far been both frustrating and freeing. While I have the general plan for this story mapped out, I've only written about 25 pages worth so far so updating may be slow-going. I'm not using a beta for this, so any mistakes, mix-ups and plot-holes are mine. It's all for fun, though, right?

Enjoy!

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><p>"[Columbus] and his men fell to their knees to kiss the sand, 'thanking God who had requited them after a voyage so long and strange.'"<p>

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><p>Bulma swished her feet in the clear water of her pool, watching the liquid swirl around her ankles in small whirls.<p>

"It's too dark," Goku said.

"What are you talking about? It's the perfect day!" She replied, tilting her face towards the sun.

"Just because the sun exists doesn't mean that the clouds don't." He stared into the trees at the edge of the yard without looking at her.

She knocked her heels back against face of the cliff, gripping the edge with white knuckles and shivering. "When did it get so cold? I wish Kami would turn the air conditioning off."

"This wind came from the stars," Kami answered, putting his hand on her shoulder and rocking her back and forth. "I have no control over it, Bulma."

"Some god you are," she snipped. "You can't even close your own windows."

Kami's mouth moved, but someone had put cotton in her ears, and he kept shaking her, trying to talk to her, but his face was getting too fuzzy—

She jerked awake, sitting straight up in bed. Vegeta dropped his hand from her shoulder and narrowed his eyes at her.

"What?" She asked after a moment, pushing her hair out of her face and tugging at the neckline of her shirt.

"You were talking in your sleep," he replied, turning away from her and slipping his boots on.

Bulma rolled her eyes at his back and flopped back against the pillows. The sun streamed through the window and against the side of her face. "So sorry to have disturbed you," she muttered the ceiling. She closed her eyes and let the heat of the daylight seep into her bones.

"I was already awake," he told her. "It was disrupting, however."

"My apologies, my Prince," Bulma snipped, turning onto her side and tugging the sheets back up over her shoulder. She snuggled her face into the pillow, impatiently waiting for her body heat to cocoon her against the chill of the room, but only a second later, the warm covers were whipped down and away from her. "HEY!" she shrieked, "what is _wrong_ with you?"

Standing at the foot of the bed with the sheets grasped in one gloved fist, Vegeta raised an eyebrow at her. "How did your company survive with such a lazy woman at its head?" he mused. Bulma stormed around the bed and snatched the sheets away from him, wrapping them around her shoulders.

"It's cold in here, jerk."

Vegeta shrugged and turned away from her, walking towards the door. "Wait, where are you going? What am I supposed to do? Hey, answer me—" The door to the room slid shut behind him, and Bulma glowered at the steel. "I cannot _believe _I am married to such a Class-A prick."

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><p>The ship had appeared in a flash in Earth's orbit two days earlier, breaking through the atmosphere before anyone even realized what was happening. Bulma and her father watched the ship's glowing hull descend from the roof of Capsule Corp. A phone call for Dr. Briefs from the National Security Bureau broke their stupor—the feds wanted him downtown immediately, and Bulma had followed to assist her father from the wings in whatever way he needed. He had been swept off to the landing zone soon after arrival, and Bulma spoke briefly to a worried Goku, telling him to stay calm and at home until they figured out what the aliens wanted.<p>

Through official reports and the media, Earth jarringly absorbed the fact that humanity was not alone in this universe. On the TV, in cafés, in classrooms, _FriezaFriezaFrieza_ echoed like a mantra, cut through with rumors of probes, domination, even assimilation. A riot nearly broke out in the streets when cameras first caught some new arrivals _flying—_as in, like, _Superman flying_—away from the ship soon after it landed. By then, though, flight was the least of Earth's concerns.

These aliens claimed to be part of a galactic empire called the Planet Trade Organization, lead by Frieza's father, King Cold, and they stated in unambiguous terms that their objective was to bring Earth into that circle. When Dr. Briefs had relayed this to Bulma earlier in the day, she had been full of energy about the prospect of technological trade with beings that had been able to accomplish inter-system travel. However, her father's clenched jaw and worried frown tempered her joy, and she realized that Frieza did not have those particular interests in mind.

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><p>To put it simply, Vegeta's bedroom certainly wasn't what Bulma had been expecting. When the hazy fog of 'oh shit I'm married to an alien what is my life coming to?' lifted, she had spent some time in her room at Capsule Corp—where she had been blockaded in a mimicry of solitary confinement by Frieza's warriors—thinking about what her new life would be like. When she imagined her new living quarters, she thought she would be living in a steel box with a cot shoved against a wall, but she had been wrong. The walls and floors were certainly gray and cold, but a massive picture window took up nearly the entire length of the far wall, and a wide bed covered in crisp linens and a heavy blanket stood in the middle of the room in lieu of a soldier's cot. A few rugs covered the floor, varying widely in shape, color, and design, telling Bulma that Vegeta had acquired these pieces from several different places. The room was large enough to have space for a modest desk in one corner, covered in papers, and a chaise-type piece of furniture in another. Needless to say, Bulma was pleasantly surprised.<p>

She had peeked around in the washroom when she had been led to the rooms after her "wedding" and her luggage had been summarily chucked into the closet. It had a oddly familiar set up: sink and counter, toilet, shower stall, and a large soaking tub, much to Bulma's delight. Vegeta had looked down his nose at her (which Bulma found amusing as they were very close to the same height) and haughtily informed her that the tub was used for ice baths.

Now, Vegeta was gone, and Bulma settled herself on the floor of the closet, shoving her luggage around and sifting through the contents. Her mother did a good job, but that was expected; Bunny always did her best work while under stress. Hangers were sparse, so she carefully created stacks of neatly folded clothes along the shelves and saved hangars for the dresses that her mother had sent with her. Her thoughts drifted uneasily as she unpacked. She thought of her parents, and if she would see them again—doubtful, if she was being completely honest with herself. What she was supposed to do when Vegeta came back; what she was supposed to do for the rest of her life? Was everything going to float around when they left Earth's gravity? And what was she supposed to do to entertain herself? She wondered what was going to happen to her designs back home—if her father would finish them, or if he would even be able to bring himself to go into her office. Fat load of good her degrees would do for her now, since she was now a member of an alien royal family.

Speaking of, what exactly was she supposed to _do_ now? It was crystal clear that even though Vegeta was a prince, he had absolutely no power relative to Frieza. What exactly did it _mean_ to be the prince of the Saiyans? What did it mean to be the _princess _of the Saiyans?

This random and endless string of questions filled her mind as she wandered around her new home. In the wall by the bed, she found a set of buttons, and another by the door to the main hallway. The scientist in her wanted to push them and see what happened, but the rational side of her knew to wait—she was surrounded by alien technology and should proceed with caution.

She leafed through the mountain of paperwork on Vegeta's desk, but it was all in a script she didn't recognize and without any diagrams or graphs for her to try to analyze. She thought briefly of settling into bed with her tablet filled with digital books, but she squashed that thought down, wanting to save those for truly boring times.

When the sun began to set outside, a woman brought a tray of food to her. It took Bulma a few minutes to figure out how to open the door, but when she did, the woman—tall, muscular, and with thick black hair; one of Vegeta's "subjects," Bulma presumed—brought the food inside and set it on the small table in front of the sofa.

"Where is Vegeta?" Bulma asked, looking at the food. It appeared to be a mix between alien food and Earth food—Bulma knew that Frieza had already started replenishing the ship's supplies from the planet.

"In the mess with the men," the woman replied curtly. She nodded at Bulma and left, shutting the door behind her.

Bulma frowned. "Everybody here is _soo_ pleasant," she mused, picking up her fork and poking at her food. She began with the Earth food, and delicately moved on to the alien food. It was spicy and hot, and Bulma could only get a few bites down before giving up and draining her glass of water to ease her scalding throat. She debated putting the tray out in the hallway like she would have at a hotel, but she didn't want to offend anyone on her first day, so she left it on the table and watched the sun over the mountains through the window.

Even after she showered and got into bed, Vegeta still hadn't returned. She ordered the lights off and pulled the covers up to her chin, turning to look at the night sky through the window. She watched the stars come out in the night, and began counting.

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><p>From the void, a hiss. And again: the sound of metal sliding against metal; it had been the door. The moon must have moved while she slept, because now its white light filtered into the room. Clothes hit the floor in muted whispers, and the mattress dipped down behind her. Sighing, she rolled onto her back and turned her face away from the jarring white brightness. Fingers brushed against her arm, then the weight of cool sheets.<p>

Then: quiet.

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><p>Just a bit of an introduction this time around. I tried to make this first bit longer, but I couldn't find a comfortable breaking point, and the longer it got, the less it felt like a "first chapter." Ah, the woes of pacing and writing~~~<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

I'm so amazed at the nice reviews that I've gotten so far! Thank you to everyone who read and responded with his or her thoughts and comments. I hope this chapter meets your expectations. Enjoy!

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><p>Bulma woke up alone the next morning with sunlight blasting straight into her face. When she stumbled into the bathroom to use the toilet, she noticed lingering droplets of water still clinging to the inside of the shower door-she had just missed Vegeta. "What a marriage," she muttered, shimmying her underwear to her ankles. She was surprised that she hadn't woken up at all while he was getting ready. <em>Stress<em>, she reasoned, _and sleep is a coping mechanism._

Another tray of food waited for her on the ottoman in front of the chaise, and Bulma gathered her hair into a messy bun as she regarded her breakfast. Vegeta had left her the _kindest_ note (_"You overslept again. Don't make this a habit."_) to the side of it. Sure enough, the bread was cold and hard but still somewhat edible, and she tore off a hunk of it to munch on as she flopped out on the chaise. The muffled sounds of activity from the hall reached her ears, and she suddenly wondered how everyone kept time on the ship. She hadn't seen any obvious clock-like devices since coming aboard, so there had to be some other gadget that everybody used. Grabbing the bowl of porridge—spicy, kind of like nutmeg and cloves and something else with a touch more heat—Bulma set out to explore the control panels on the walls.

The panel by the door, while not disclosing Bulma's desired information, still gave her some interesting results after a few rounds of trial and error. In addition to confirming the location of the buttons for the door and lights, she found one that lifted and lowered a shade over the window. Another button brought up a map of the ship, which she scrutinized accordingly. Unfortunately, the map only showed an interactive layout of the halls and rooms on the various levels of the ship and not any electrical or plumbing schematics. Another button brought the noises of the outside hall into the room through a speaker, and she opened the door to see if it was a two-way system. (It was.)

The panel by the bed was a near carbon-copy of the one by the door, with it's own speaker system and map. "Makes sense," Bulma mused out loud, "just in case _his imperial excellency_ needs something in the middle of the night." A few buttons were unique: one controlled a single recessed light over the bed, another opened a hidden cabinet where Vegeta had stored some pill bottles, a few towels, and some liquids in containers of varying sizes, and third illuminated a small screen below the panel.

"Aha!" Bulma crowed, bending down to examine the symbols. They weren't the numbers that she was accustomed to on Earth, but they were arranged linearly and they changed at a steady pace. "Definitely a clock," she said, setting her hands on her hips and flipping her hair over her shoulder. "Yep, I'm a genius. Now I just need to get Vegeta to tell me what these things stand for and how to set an alarm. Easy-peasy."

With a brighter outlook on her day, Bulma flounced to bathroom and hopped into the shower. "I don't know if that _husband_ of mine is expecting me to just sit around in this room all day," she griped, scrubbing at her legs with a loofah, "but if so, then he has another thing coming. I'm too beautiful and brilliant to be locked up in here like some princess in a tower!"

Resolute in her plan to find something on the ship to occupy herself with, Bulma readied herself as though she were going to work in the lab at Capsule Corp: dark pants and a long-sleeved shirt, topped off with a tidy ponytail. Unconsciously, she began to look for her purse, but stopped when she remembered that she was not at home anymore; she was on a massive space ship, married, and probably wouldn't need a purse ever again.

"Let's just not think about this anymore," she chided herself, brushing her bangs out of her face and striding out of the room before she lost her nerve and retired to the bed for the rest of the day.

Almost immediately, she had to duck out of the way of two women carrying a massive crate, and then she weaved to avoid a cart pushed by a purple…amoeba? She followed this amorphous creature down the hall and around a corner, wondering how it logically categorized even the simplest tasks. Then a soldier shouldered past her and she stopped cold, her back pressed against a wall. "Oh, shit," Bulma cursed, slapping her palm to her forehead. "I forgot to look at the map." And after trying to retrace her steps, she found herself completely lost. "Shit," she muttered again, approaching an intersection slowly and trying to avoid the inevitable moment where she would have to decide which way to go.

She hesitated, looking down both hallways, and that proved to be her mistake. "Well, well, what do we have here?" something sneered from beside her. Bulma jumped and whirled to face two aliens, both short and green. "This little birdy looks a bit lost. Maybe we can help her on her way."

"That—that would be nice?" Bulma stuttered out, trying to sound professional but unable to focus on anything but the massive claws the duo sported. Clearing her throat, she tried again. "I'm trying to get back to my room-"

"And I can help you get there," said another voice, this one vaguely familiar. "Rotume and Vareli were just on their way to the brig; they don't need to be distracted from their business." A hand landed on her shoulder, and the aqua skin and polished nails loosed the name _Zarbon_ from her memory. Bulma felt as though she had just jumped from the pan into the fire, as it were.

Rotume and Valeri ducked their heads and shuffled past, cutting dark glances at Bulma on their way. Once they were around another corner, Zarbon's hand slid from her shoulder and he stepped around into her field of vision. "A note of caution, darling, you really shouldn't engage Yarguris in conversation. We employ them exclusively as interrogators for our most…headstrong of prisoners."

"Yaguris," Bulma dumbly repeated, horrible visions crossing her mind.

"Now, where are you going, little one?" Zarbon asked, crossing his arms and examining her wardrobe.

"Nowhere," Bulma said quickly, shrugging. "Just…taking a walk."

Zarbon clucked at her. "Not in those clothes, I don't think so. I hope you weren't planning on trying to get off the ship. If that were the case, then I might have to reconsider my previous advice and let you have a private conversation with Valeri and his associate."

Bulma's eyes widened at Zarbon's penetrating gaze. "No! Do you think I'm that stupid? I'd try to cut through that glass in the room before I'd try to get out through this maze. I was…looking for a laboratory," Bulma finally admitted. "Or the engine room. But I didn't get a good look at the map, so I got lost pretty quickly."

Zarbon didn't look too convinced by her brief explanation, and so Bulma pressed onward, speaking quickly. "Vegeta just dumped me in that room and I haven't even _seen_ him since he tossed my bags into the closet the other day like some pissed-off bellboy. Don't get me wrong: this place is nicer than I expected—like, a LOT nicer—but this isn't my typical vacation locale, buddy. And if I can't have massages and endless magazines at my disposal, I'm going to need to do something with myself. I'm a genius, you know, and geniuses don't do well with boredom. So I need to get my hands on some vials or some machinery or I'm going to go cuckoo in here, and trust me, you do _not_ want to see me get stir-crazy. I can give character references to you for that."

Zarbon seemed much more amused now, and Bulma breathed an shaky sigh of relief, taking her hands off of her hips and tossing her bangs back. "Well, then," he said, turning on his heel and motioning for her to follow with a flip of his hand, "I suppose it would only benefit us in the long run if you earned your keep here. We'll go and see what Orja has to say about this."

Beaming at Zarbon's back, Bulma set off after him, a more confident swing to her step. _Watch out, Alien Ship of Doom_, she internally crowed, _Bulma Briefs is about to get her groove back._

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><p>Vegeta's patience for the newest addition to his squad was quickly approaching the breaking point. "Are you <em>such<em> a weakling that you cannot even _attempt_ an offensive strike?" he shouted, swinging for his opponent's stomach with a closed fist.

Kakarott easily dodged it, flash stepping backwards and falling back into a blocking position without a word, still refusing to make a retaliatory move against Vegeta. It had been like this since he had first been brought on board—quick to defend but consciously avoiding an active spar. Vegeta clenched his jaw and stood up straight, turning his back on Radditz's brother.

"Worthless," he grit out, barely restraining himself from bashing Kakarott's head into the wall. The prince stretched out his arms as he walked to the other side of the training room floor. His squad looked at him expectantly, Nappa holding out a cup of water for him to drink.

"Want one of us to take a chance, my lord?" Serori asked, peering at Kakarott from under her bangs and cracking her knuckles.

Vegeta grunted and shook his head. "No, there's no point. We could spend all day beating him into the ground and he would never strike back."

"He's had training," Radditz stated, "that much is clear."

Vegeta sneered at him. "Thank you for your enlightening commentary, soldier."

"Well, then," Nappa broke in, "what do you want to do with him?"

Frowning, Vegeta took another gulp of water. He had easily sensed Kakarott's physical and energetic strength through his simple elusive maneuvers. Yes, he'd had training, but it had clearly only refined the man's natural talent. Not surprising—Bardock's mate had been the bastard daughter of a Southern Elite, and those genetics were strong but selective, as their absence in Radditz showed. If he continued to resist, though—

Vegeta's hesitation to answer was covered up as Daikon burst into the training room in a full sprint. "Prince Vegeta!"

"What?" He yelled back, tossing his empty cup aside.

"Your wife is in the lab with Orja and Zarbon!" Daikon answered, skidding to a stop in front of his prince and quickly thumping his chest with his fist in salute.

Vegeta cursed under his breath, snatching Radditz's towel from his hand and wiping his own face and neck with it. "Nappa, with me. You," he shouted at Kakarott, who looked much less serious now that he had that dumb, surprised look on his face. "You're just taking up space in here. Daikon, dump him back in his room and lock him in. The rest of you make yourselves useful and train." His squad broke up and spread out across the training room as Vegeta and Nappa left.

"I thought you said you left her in the room," Nappa muttered, clearly taking his role of advisor seriously

Vegeta scowled. "I did."

"Then—"

"Obviously she opened the door and walked out, Nappa. I didn't lock her in or anything ridiculous like that. I'm much more interested in how Zarbon plays into all of this," he snarled. The Remana nurses ahead of him lowered their eyes and pressed their backs against the wall as he passed.

He caught sight of Bulma's blue hair through the oblong windows of the lab. It had been sprawled haphazardly across their pillows this morning while she slept; she had it pulled back now, out of her face so that she could peer through a microscope.

"Woman, what the _fuck_ are you doing in here?" He demanded as he passed through the automatic doors, his authoritative voice bringing all activity in the lab to a screeching halt. Bulma jerked backwards in surprise, nearly falling off of her stool.

"Prince Vegeta," the lead scientist (_Orja, _Vegeta recalled) greeted him, her voice lazy and distracted as she adjusted her own microscope. "What brings you here today?"

"I wasn't speaking to _you_," he replied. "The reason for your presence here is obvious. I was speaking to that one." Vegeta pointed at Bulma, who spun around on her stool to face him square on.

"You can use my name, you know. It would help in actually getting my attention," Bulma said testily. "I'm so sorry," she said to Orja, who waved her off and jotted notes in her files.

"What are you doing here?" he asked her again, glaring at the other lab technicians until they returned to their previous business.

Bulma huffed and set her hands on her hips. "I'm working, Vegeta. I was starting to get cabin fever, especially since you're never around."

"_Prince_ Vegeta has more important things to do than to keep you entertained, woman," Nappa interjected, looking down his nose at Bulma.

"Hey, I don't like your tone, buddy," she shot back, shaking her finger at him. Nappa's eyes grew wide and feral, much to Vegeta's amusement, but Bulma soldiered on. "And I'm not begging for him to keep me company. I'm a big girl and I can take care of myself."

Vegeta snickered darkly. "Maybe on Earth, but not here. You wouldn't last a minute alone in these halls."

Bulma narrowed her eyes, replying, "You shouldn't underestimate me. I've been between a rock and a hard place more than a few times in my life."

Off to the side, where she'd been silent for the past few minutes, Orja snapped her folder shut, tossed it into a stack, and cleared her throat. "All due respect, Prince Vegeta, but the laboratory _is_ short-handed at the moment and from what I've seen, she's more than capable of contributing to the workload here."

Bulma smiled triumphantly at Vegeta, who steadily held her gaze. "Fine. _But_," he continued grimly as Bulma's smile widened, "a member of my squad will escort you to and from the lab and you are not allowed to go anywhere else on the ship, understood?"

"What?" Bulma shrieked. "No way! That's like house arrest! You can't just lock me up-"

"Those are my terms!" Vegeta thundered. "Take it or leave it. If you don't accept them, then I _will_ drag you back to the room and lock you in there to make sure your little excursions don't happen again."

Bulma exhaled angrily through her nose and sneered at Vegeta. "You are ridiculous," she seethed. "But listen here, bud: I will make your life into a living hell if you try to renege on this."

"I'm shaking in my boots," Vegeta replied drily, rolling his eyes. "But luckily for me, that day isn't today. Woman," he called out to Orja, who had turned back to her work, "one of my soldiers told me that she saw Zarbon in here as well, yet I see that he is nowhere to be found."

"He brought your wife in and left," Orja said dismissively, rifling through a box of slides.

"Really, now," Vegeta mused, turning back to Bulma. "And how did you and Zarbon happen to run into each other?"

_This is how it must feel to be interrogated by the police_, Bulma thought, completely exasperated by Vegeta's presence at this point. "I was lost and he saved me from some...Yagurus? Yagrunis?"

"Yaguris," Nappa rasped from behind his prince.

Bulma snapped her fingers and pointed in his direction, saying, "Yes. Yaguris."

"Zarbon doesn't save anyone from anything," Vegeta told her, his eyes searching her face suspiciously. By this point, most of the other technicians had edged as far away from the discordant Saiyan prince as possible, even into the adjoining rooms, leaving the lab sparsely populated.

"Well, that's what happened and I don't know what else to say to you about it. Would you please let me get back to work?" Bulma asked pointedly.

"Sorry," Vegeta said, quite unrepentant, "but all my men are busy for the rest of the day. Nappa will take you back to the room now, and I'll arrange for someone to escort you in the morning."

"You're going to cut my day short and not even walk me back yourself?"

"I have something else to deal with," Vegeta replied. Without another word, he turned around and left.

"Let's go," Nappa grunted. He reached forward for her arm, but Bulma dodged him and shook a finger at him.

"You're walking next to me, not manhandling me," she informed him briskly. "Thank you, Orja. I'll see you tomorrow, I hope." The older woman called a good bye over her shoulder, and Bulma followed Nappa out the door.

The duo walked in silence the whole way back, refusing to walk any closer than necessary. By the time they got to the door of her and Vegeta's room, her temper was about to boil over.

"It's for your own good, girl," Nappa said to her as he keyed in the entrance code to the door. "You need to listen to what Prince Vegeta tells you to do."

Bulma shoved past him into the room. "Mind your own damn business," she hissed, punching the button to shut the door on Nappa's angry expression. She crossed the room to the window, pressing her hands against the glass and peering outside. The sun was high in the sky now, heating the plate of thick glass, and the ground around the ship bustled with activity, both human and alien. She had experienced mergers and takeovers before and knew that emotions had to be running high among the humans, and probably at some elevated level among Frieza's camp. Orja, the peach-skinned scientist whom Bulma had immediately admired, had told her that Frieza was swiftly instituting his own advisors in the existing executive networks to establish reliable means of communication.

Her father had to be worried. Suddenly, Bulma thought of Capsule Corp and what would become of it. Hopefully her father would start destroying some of his inventions, or at least hiding the designs for now. But maybe one of Frieza's cronies already moved in as the new CEO. Helplessness surged through Bulma with such abruptness that she felt lightheaded. The urge to run out the door, to find a way off the ship, to get home and help her father was overwhelming, and she inhaled deeply to calm herself down. She knew that she wouldn't make it five steps from the door before Vegeta knew about it, and Kami help her if _Frieza_ found out about it. She knew deep in the marrow of her bones that he would not hesitate to follow through on his earlier threats, even though she had gone through with the wedding as promised.

She sank to the floor, pulling her knees to her chest and pressing her face into them. Where was Goku? He should have heard about the world's predicament by now and at least come to talk to Frieza, if not challenge him outright. And the others? Krillin may have been too scared to do anything without Goku by his side, but at least Piccolo and Tien should have come out by now. Even Yamcha would have shown his cocky attitude off by now, right? The situation must be really, really bad out there...

Her silent tears had turned into huge, ugly, gulping sobs by this point. She was stuck here, now, living with a socially-inept asshole who wanted to control her like she was his prisoner, and under the direct supervision of an intergalactic tyrant who made his money by killing people and selling their planets. Her earlier bravado was completely gone now, replaced by a crippling sense of insignificance and despair. She imagined pacing the floors of this room for years and years, leaving only to work in the lab, never being allowed to leave, most likely being forced to sleep with Vegeta once he stopped being so awkwarded-out by her unwanted presence, and, worst of all, being complicit through her marriage and her work with the terrorism and genocide of billions of people throughout the galaxy.

Still crying, she crawled over to the bed and climbed onto it, turning her wet cheeks into the pillow as she curled up. She was exhausted, now, and the weight on her chest made it so easy to fall asleep.

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><p>A tremor rumbled beneath her, vaulting her straight up in bed. "What's happening?" she called into the darkness, gripping the blankets as the rumbling strengthened.<p>

"We're taking off," a voice said from her left. Bulma shrieked and jumped out of bed, scrambling backwards until her back hit the wall. She pressed her hands against her fluttering heart as her eyes slowly adjusted, focusing on Vegeta's prone form in the bed. He lay on his back, one arm behind his head as he regarded her curiously from his pillow.

Bulma swallowed unsteadily, moving her hands to scrub at her face. Her fingers caught on the puffy skin around her eyes and she remembered that she had been crying earlier. The floor jerked beneath her feet, and she slung an arm out, grabbing onto the window's frame for support. "What's happening?" she asked again, more cogently this time.

Vegeta paused before repeating, "We're taking off."

"What? Why?" Bulma asked desperately, moving to the window and looking outside. They were still close to the ground, but ascending rapidly. The field was empty, except for a swarm of media and government personnel watching from a safe distance.

"Frieza has a very busy schedule," Vegeta said, a dark edge to his voice. "We've already stayed longer than planned."

The details of the ground below blurred together quickly, becoming smaller and smaller before disappearing into a shapeless mass of land and water. Bulma stayed at the window until whole planet appeared in her view, blue and green and white like a marble she might have played with as a child. The edges blurred, and Bulma reached up to rub at her eyes. Her fingers came away wet, and with the realization that she was crying again, Bulma's shoulders began to quiver. She peeked over her shoulder and saw that Vegeta was still watching her with his black eyes.

"You should come back to bed," he told her. "We'll be going sub-ether in a few minutes and we'll be out of the system by morning."

_The system_, she mouthed, watching Earth grow smaller and smaller. "I'm going to—" her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat and tried again. "I'm going to take a bath. And then change. And then I'll be back. Don't wait up." She turned her back on Earth and walked into the bathroom, turning on the light and sliding the door closed.

Vegeta stayed in bed and stared at the ceiling as he listened to the water run and Bulma cry. "So loud," he grumbled after a while, turning onto his side.

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><p>A few decks above Bulma and Vegeta, Goku stood at the window of his own small room. He had held onto Gohan's ki as long as he could, and could feel it no longer. He bent his head and prayed harder than ever before.<p>

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><p>So. I hope that you all aren't turned off by the ~angst~ at the end of this chapter. It's really not meant to be a gut-wrenching story at all, but to not include any sort of soul searching on B's end regarding the track that her life is taking wouldn't have been believable from a human and emotional standpoint. That part should be over (at least for now!) in the next chapter. If we know anything about Bulma Briefs, it's that she eventually will hoist herself up by her bootstraps, take the lemons that life has given her and…make some sort of machine out of them.<p> 


	3. Chapter 3

Hey, all. I did not expect that this would take so long to write and post. It was basically a combo of real-life stuff going on that interfered with writing and then having a writer's block with everything that happens in this chapter. This chapter is very dialogue heavy and light on prose, but it should answer some of the questions people have had so far.

Enjoy!

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><p>Bulma spent the next few days holed up in the room, sleeping and crying. Vegeta was sometimes there in the mornings and evenings, always silent in bed or at his desk. Bulma would turn her back to his dark eyes and stay quiet until he left or she fell back asleep. He grumbled at her every morning that she had to get out of bed and go to work, and she fed him excuses: she was always too tired or didn't feel well.<p>

Finally, one day as Bulma picked at her lunch, Vegeta unexpectedly stormed into the room. He was only wearing the spandex part of his uniform, if you could still call it that. The knees of his pants were worn through and the massive shreds in his top revealed ugly bruises rising to the surface of his skin. Only his horrendous fuzzy belt seemed to still be intact. He walked past her with only the briefest of glances, but he apparently thought better of it, stopping abruptly and turning around to face her. "When are you going to the lab, woman?" he demanded roughly, stripping his gloves off and throwing them onto the bed.

Bulma was momentarily shocked by his direct question and gaped at him with wide eyes. "I'm too tired right now," she replied defensively, plucking at the hem of her shirt.

Vegeta frowned and gripped her jaw, tilting her face up towards his. He peered into her eyes for a moment, taking in their redness and the inflamed skin of her eyelids and cheeks, then released her. "Bullshit," he spat. "You're wallowing."

"Excuse you!" Bulma exclaimed. She climbed off of the chaise and followed him into the bathroom, yelling after him as he stripped off the top part of his uniform and retrieved a fresh one from his closet. "I am _not_ wallowing, and even if I were, I would have every right to!"

"Oh, really?" Vegeta replied, grabbing a new pair of boots. "You think you're special? You think that something so uniquely horrible has happened to you that you can sit around and cry all day about it?" He pushed past her stunned form and moved back into the bedroom, dropping down onto the sofa to pull his damaged boots off. "Everyone on this ship has gone through the same thing as you have," he told her. "Nobody _chooses_ to be a part of the Planet Trade Organization; it is something that is done _to_ them by Frieza. You should consider yourself pretty fucking lucky that you're only taking an extended vacation from your homeworld for the time being."

"You think I should feel _lucky?_" Bulma asked incredulously.

Vegeta stopped and stared at her for a moment, his brows drawn tightly together. Then he ran his hand through his hair and stood up. "I don't really care about how you feel," he snapped, pulling on his new shirt. "I'm tired of this room smelling like salt and self-pity and hearing you cry all the damn time. I'm sending Daikon to get you in fifteen minutes and he will have orders to take you to the lab, bodily if needed. That should be more than enough time to brush the knots out of your hair and put on something that doesn't resemble a hospital gown," he sneered, eyeing her huge Capsule Corp shirt.

Bulma gawked at him as he left the room without a backwards glance at her. "A _hospital gown_?" She shrieked after him, even as the door slid shut midway through her tirade. "Asshole!"

She turned on her heel and stomped into the bathroom, grabbing her ill-used brush and yanking it through her hair. The mirror, ever a girl's best frenemy, spared Bulma no quarter as she took in her sallow skin and the bags under her eyes. "Ugh," she muttered in disgust, and snatched her face wash from the shower.

Fifteen minutes later, she was slipping on a pair of black heels when the door chimed. She had to tilt her head back to meet the eyes of the Saiyan outside the door, who wore his dark red hair cropped into a mohawk. "Daikon, I presume?" she snipped, pushing past him on her way out of the room.

"Yes. Prince Vegeta—"

"Rhetorical question," Bulma cut him off, holding a finger in the air and marching away down the hallway.

Behind her back, Daikon rolled his eyes. His prince hadn't had to tell any of them what had been going on, but they could all smell his wife's tears and unhappiness on him. The obvious downside of sharing a living space, Daikon concluded. This was exactly why _he_ never mixed sex and cohabitation. She seemed in fine form now, though, so Vegeta must have said something to snap her out of it; he had a knack for that sort of thing.

He left her at the door to the lab, ignoring her curt and sarcastic dismissal. Bulma frowned when he simply walked away without another word. "Men," she muttered.

"Ah, so you've decided to come back," Orja's drawled from behind her. Bulma jumped a bit before turning to face the head scientist, who was sitting at the station closest to the door. She hadn't given Bulma her full attention yet, instead flipping through some pages in a file, making notes here and there. Bulma felt a bit like a school child waiting in front of her teacher's desk. She watched as Orja's dark green bangs fell in front of her eyes, and how Orja ignored them until she had finished writing, only then deigning to brush them back behind her ear. "Next time, you should at least let us know that you're going to be taking an extended vacation," Orja finally said, turning her gaze to Bulma.

_Oh, shit_. Bulma opened her mouth to complain about being homesick, to bitch about Vegeta's lack of understanding, but his words flashed through her ears—"_Everyone on this ship has gone through the same thing that you have._" In the end, all she could bring herself to say was, "I'm sorry."

Orja hmmed in acknowledgement and pointed to the station next to hers with her pen. "You can work there again, like last time. The decision to send that tech back planet-side was finalized while you were gone; she'll be gone for a few weeks at least. Grab a lab coat and some vials," she instructed Bulma, who hopped into action, shrugging on the white jacket and opening drawers to find her supplies. "I need a complete profile done on the patient in bed four—bloodwork, skin and hair samples, everything. I know it's been a while since you've done medical work," Orja told Bulma, referencing their last conversation, "so take your time and do it right."

Nodding, Bulma picked up her materials followed the same path that she had taken with Orja a few days before. The medical and research sections of the lab were separated by a long hallway lined with shelves and storage carts. Inside the massive medical wing, movable walls created temporary rooms capable of accommodating even the largest of patients. Because of this, Bulma had to navigate a bit to find the door whose symbol matched the one on the top of her paperwork. "Four!" She whispered to herself, knocking on the door and entering.

"Hi, I'm Bulma—" she cut herself off, staring at the man in the bed, who stared back at her with the same shocked expression. Then she burst into tears and threw herself on him, dropping her paperwork all over the floor. She wailed into his neck for a few minutes before lifting her head and wiping at her eyes. "I'm sorry," she sniffled, "I'm probably hurting you."

"I don't care," Goku replied, tightening his arms around her torso like a vise. "What are you doing here, Bulma?"

"Frieza made me marry Vegeta," Bulma said, pulling away from Goku so she could look at his face.

"Vegeta?" Goku asked, an incredulous tone in his voice. "Wait…you're _that_ wife?" He gingerly raised himself up, scooting his hips backward so that he could comfortably sit upright. Bulma could tell that he wanted desperately to cross his legs, but his knees must have been messed up because he seemed reluctant to move anything below his thighs. "Huh, that must be why they're all acting so weird."

"Weird like what?"

"All the other Saiyans talk about Vegeta and…well, you, I guess. But I guess he has good hearing because even when they're whispering he'll come over and beat them up."

Bulma rolled her eyes. "That doesn't surprise me. He's got a short fuse. _Wait_," she said, furrowing her brow. "Why are _you_ here? Did you come to fight and they caught you?"

Goku's face crumpled and he put his face in his hands. "No," he mumbled. Bulma hadn't seen Goku cry in a long time, but judging by his jumpy breathing, she figured he must be pretty close to tears. She leaned over and rubbed the back of his neck.

"Tell me what happened," she prodded gently.

After a few deep breaths, he started talking, dropping his hands to his lap and staring at them. "After you called, I stayed at home like you told me to. ChiChi and I watched the TV for a while, and I saw when Radditz and Nappa flew out of the ship. I could feel them, too—they were headed towards our mountain and I knew that they were coming for me."

"That's ridiculous. How could you have possibly known that?"

"Because Grandpa Gohan found me in a spaceship, not abandoned in the woods by my parents like I tell everyone," he admitted, just barely meeting her eyes. "I just had this gut feeling. It was too much of a coincidence. So, I put ChiChi and Gohan on Nimbus and sent them in one direction and I flew off in the other direction, keeping my ki up so they'd find me. I stopped by a waterfall and pretended to be fishing when they caught up to me."

He paused here, and Bulma asked, "And then you fought them?"

"No. I went with them."

Bulma furrowed her brow and shook her head. "Why?"

"If I fought them, my ki would have jumped all over the place, and Gohan would have tried to come after me. I want to keep him safe; I want ChiChi to be safe. So I just went with them. They want me to join their army, to be a soldier," he said bitterly. "While we were still on Earth, Vegeta tried to get me to spar with him, and I thought that maybe…if I didn't fight back, they'd throw me out and forget about me. But that didn't happen." Goku sighed and flopped back onto his bed, immediately groaning in pain. "I fought back today. I think he knows I wasn't fighting back on purpose. I think I made him angry."

"Yep," Bulma agreed, nudging his arm with her fist. "You put him in a foul mood."

But Goku was still staring at the ceiling with a pensive look on his face. "I think I'm a bit stronger than him, and he realized it. And that's why he's angry."

"Why isn't he here in the bed, then?" she teased.

He swallowed heavily and folded an arm across his eyes. "Sometimes taking the hit feels better than landing it."

_Well, that's a pretty self-destructive way to look at it_, Bulma thought. She smoothed her hand over her hair, searching for something to say, finally settling on, "On the bright side, at least you weren't forced into a loveless marriage based on the whim of a galactic overlord."

That snapped him out of his daze. He lifted his arm up and asked for details, and she gave them to him. She told him about following her father to the landing site, where they met up with the Bureau of National Security and began negotiations with Frieza. She told him about Frieza's disbelief at still finding the planet intact, and how the surprise of the planet's abundant and diverse life turned into a plot to strip it of its natural resources to supply the PTO. She told him that _of course_, she couldn't keep her mouth shut and _that's_ when Frieza noticed her. Zarbon had liked her hair, and then they called Vegeta over and asked him what he thought.

"About you? What did he say?"

Bulma shrugged, twisting her mouth and looking at the wall. "He just kinda stared at me. Then he said that I was 'unusual-looking, but hardly useful,'" she quoted, using her fingers for emphasis.

"And then?" Goku asked, his attention raptly focused on Bulma.

"Frieza started talking about marriage and Zarbon was, like, falling all over himself. Vegeta looked like he was about to explode and then Dad got involved. Ugh," Bulma pressed her hand over her eyes and shook her head. "It got real heated. _Then_, Frieza said that if I didn't marry Vegeta, that he'd start shooting nukes in whatever direction he felt was a good one."

"Wow," Goku murmured, sounding relatively un-surprised. Bulma got the feeling that Goku may have had some first-hand experiences with Frieza as well. "And you believed him?"

"We detected radiological signals at the landing site, before we had even started thinking about talking to Frieza." Goku looked confused, so Bulma rephrased: "Our equipment told us they had active nuclear weapons aboard. I knew he was telling the truth."

"I just can't believe your dad let you get married like that."

"Dad didn't _let_ me do anything," Bulma replied. "I made the decision on my own. He could have bombed West City, or Delhi, or New York City…when I thought about it that way, marriage was the…_only_ option."

In her mind's eye, she saw Vegeta again: where he stood up on that dais, arms crossed and eyebrow raised, his eyes moving over her body. She wanted to call it "predatory," but stopped herself because she hadn't felt like prey at all. It was more like he had been trying to separate her into smaller, more understandable parts so that he could figure out how those pieces fit together to make her into the woman she was. But then Frieza mentioned marriage, and Vegeta's focus moved away from her.

Goku's hand closed around hers, and Bulma blinked, realized that she had been staring at the wall for a few moments. "Sorry," she murmured.

He shook his head and squeezed her hand. "Don't worry about it." After a moment: "He's been good to you?"

She frowned at him. "Good to – Oh. Yes. I suppose. I mean, he's a total ass, but nothing…bad so far," Bulma concluded, picking at the sheets. She thought back to her breakdown, and her worries about being forced to sleep with Vegeta-

"I don't think you'll have to worry about that," Goku told her confidently, picking up on her dark thoughts.

"Because you've known him for so long?" Bulma snipped, tugging her hand from Goku's and watching his curl into a fist against the sheets.

"No," Goku replied tightly, "but I've had enough practice reading people that I can tell the difference by now."

"Yeah, and you always give them the benefit of the doubt," she said. Goku's face instantly shuttered, and he turned his eyes to the ceiling. Her heart dropped to her stomach, and she cursed herself for speaking before thinking, as usual. Goku's kindness and willingness to offer forgiveness to his enemies until the very end was what defined him as a person. "I'm sorry. I know that you're only trying to reassure me. I'm still just freaked out by everything that's happened."

And with that, Goku's face softened and he looked back at her. "I think I get it. ChiChi always tells me that I need to remember that men and women are different." He blanched again at the offhand mention of his wife, and Bulma patted his arm.

"She's fine, Goku. Gohan is with her and I'm sure that one of the other guys has found her by now. Listen," she said, looking over her shoulder at her supplies, now scattered carelessly across the floor, "I have to take some samples from you."

"Okay," Goku replied listlessly.

"I have to take some blood," she warned him, getting off the bed and collecting everything, depositing it all back into its basket. Yup, she saw some needles.

"I don't care," he said. He looked pitiful, and Bulma decided to get the blood work done while he was still trapped in melancholy.

As she filled the vials, the wheels of her mind began turning. There had to be some way to get in touch with Earth. Frieza had to be keeping an eye on his minions, right? If she could figure out how messages were sent back and forth, then maybe she could help Goku out.

"You know," she murmured quietly, untying the tourniquet and picking up a long-stemmed cotton swab, "you could have told me that you were an alien. Kami, Piccolo, Shenron, Puar…I'm pretty used to that particular brand of weird shit by now."

Goku snorted as she swabbed the inside of his cheek. "I didn't know enough about myself to answer questions. It was easier on all of us that way. But now I know—Saiyan. They said that if I ever get into a regeneration tank, my tail will grow back." He said this last part with caution, as if the idea worried him. Bulma had glimpsed the tanks earlier, and this only reminded her of her desire to examine them.

With a deliberately nonchalant attitude, she shuffled everything back into her basket and said, "Well, last time I checked, we're zooming through space faster than the speed of light. I don't think you have to worry about any full moons for the time being. Just try to not get too beat up, okay?" The last thing that she wanted to do was worry Goku any more than necessary.

She left him in the little room, closing the door behind her. He had already settled back under his sheets and was drifting into a nap, thanks to the sedative she had slipped him. She felt like she floated more than walked back to her desk next to Orja, having spent most of the journey lost in thought.

"Find anything interesting in there?" Orja asked, cutting her cat-like eyes sideways at Bulma.

For a split second, Bulma's heart stopped, and she wondered if Orja had been watching or listening to her and Goku's entire conversation. But then she remembered that she hadn't seen evidence of any recording devices on the ship the whole time that she had been aboard. So, she chalked it up to Orja's acerbic demeanor and set her basket down on her desk, humming in a very non-committed way. "Do you need a full work up done?"

"Of course."

Bulma sat down, pulled her microscope towards her, and got to work.

* * *

><p>Later that evening, after Radditz had grumpily escorted her back to her room, Bulma slipped into some leggings and a sweatshirt and piled up in bed with her book tablet. She tried to make some headway into a political thriller that she had been putting off for months, but instead found her eyes drawn towards the multicolored streaks streaming past the window. The ship had been travelling at this "superluminal" speed ever since it cleared Earth's gravitational pull, creating a 24-hour light show for everyone aboard.<p>

In this quiet, she was finally able to sift through the revelations from her conversation with Goku. Despite her encouraging words at the time, she worried for ChiChi and Gohan. ChiChi was smart though, and her protective mothering instinct strong, so Bulma had faith that they had made it somewhere safe, like the Ox King's house, or even Kame House. It'd be hard to find a little island in the middle of big ocean.

And Goku wasn't just a strange little boy, if what he said was true. He was an alien, just like all of the people on this ship—just like Vegeta. Now his super strength and crazy appetite made sense (she'd seen Vegeta scarf down like, four trays of food one morning and then grumble about still being hungry). And his big monkey form? Bulma shook her head, refusing to think about that. Because if all Saiyans were able to turn into huge monkeys, then Vegeta—

No. Didn't she just say she wasn't going to think about it?

The door slid open and Vegeta walked in, followed closely by a statuesque woman carrying a tray of food. She stood at least a head taller than Vegeta, and wore black spandex instead of the navy blue that Bulma had seen on almost everyone else. "Speak of the devil and he shall come," Bulma murmured to herself, turning her eyes back to her tablet.

The woman walked around to Bulma's side of the bed and held the tray out to her. "Your grace," she greeted, directly meeting Bulma's eyes.

It took Bulma a moment to process the title, and then she reached for the tray. "Oh, thank you." The woman nodded and turned to Vegeta without another word to Bulma.

"Nappa's going to want those plans in the morning," she told him, flicking her bangs from behind her scouter. "He always get so pissy when he feels like there isn't an 'official' version for him to refer to."

"You say this like I haven't been dealing with him my whole life, Serori," Vegeta remarked drily, leafing through some papers at his desk. "I have it sketched out here; I'll finish it and give it to him before we go before Frieza tomorrow."

"All right," Serori said airily, heading for the door. "Don't have too much fun tonight, Prince Vegeta." Bulma almost choked on her food, but Vegeta didn't even acknowledge the woman's exit as he continued to look over his papers.

"So," he finally drawled, "when did you plan on telling me that you've known Kakarott for years?"

Bulma stared at him, pausing in her crunching of an apple. "Who?"

Vegeta rolled his eyes. "The half-wit Saiyan that we collected from Earth. He said that you and he were 'friends.' At least that's what I made out from whatever medically-induced semi-coma that he was in." He apparently gave up on his papers, tossing them onto his desk and stripping his gloves off.

Then his fuzzy belt _unwound itself_ to swing free behind him and Bulma felt like an idiot for ever even thinking it had been a belt. So Vegeta _could_ turn into a monkey, then. Awesome.

"His name is Goku," she corrected him, returning to her apple. "And I didn't know that he was an alien until today. This is news to me, too, buddy."

Vegeta, who had been in the process of setting his armor on the sofa, paused. "Buddy?" he repeated, raising a brow in Bulma's direction.

"Oh, forgive me," Bulma exclaimed, theatrically bringing her hand to her chest. "_Your royal highness_."

Vegeta snickered darkly. "It appears that your day trip to the lab has restored your glowing personality. I should have just left you alone; at least then you would be quiet."

She glared at him and crossed her arms across her chest. "Yes, it's amazing what some fresh air will do after being holed up in a room for days with your scary mug."

Vegeta stripped off his top, balled it up, and tossed it on top of his pile of armor. "You aren't scared of me," he said, matter-of-fact, "you're pissed at me."

"Are you kidding me? I'm _terrified_ of you," she huffed, and tossed her bread on the tray. She wasn't hungry anymore.

Vegeta's face suddenly blurred in front of her own, and she inhaled sharply and slammed herself backwards against the wall behind the bed. His nose brushed against hers, and his hand rested lightly at the base of her neck. She heard her heart pounding in her ears and a cold sweat broke out across her forehead.

"There," he murmured, his gleaming eyes meeting hers. "That's fear."

And with that, she realized that he was mocking her, and she growled and shoved at his shoulders. He resisted, tilting his head ever so slightly to the right. _He's looking at me again_, she thought briefly, remembering how he had stared at her when they first met. But she was still angry with him, so she pushed him again, cussing him every way from Sunday, and this time he went easily, walking away from the bed with his tail making loops behind his back.

Her words didn't even faze him, sliding off his bare back like water off a duck. He went into the bathroom, closing the door between them. Bulma flopped back against the pillows and glowered at the ceiling. She heard the shower start in the bathroom, but her defenestration of Vegeta's character and family silently continued in her head.

Even as the sound of running water lulled her to sleep, a swath of her skin still tingled, right where his thumb had skated along her collarbone.

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><p>So, what did you all think? I struggled a lot with how to go about detailing what happened before the events of chapter one, and I figured that a conversation would be more engaging than straight narration. Some of you said that you wanted more interaction between Vegeta and Bulma, and I knew that it was coming up in this chapter.<p>

PS: Daikon is Japanese for "giant radish," so imagine him as super tall, super broad, and super barrel-chested. Serori is Japanese for "celery," so she's basically very tall and fine-boned for a Saiyan, but still ripped like all professional soldiers. And yes, uniform color does make a difference. :P


	4. Chapter 4

OMG I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. Here's 11 pages, try to forgive meeeeeee.

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><p>Vegeta woke with the ship.<p>

Beginning deep in the belly of the vessel, hallway lights blinked on, computers whirred to life, and recycled air surged forward through the miles of ductwork lining hallways and galleys. To conserve fuel and energy, ship computers suspended these functions for seven of the twenty-four clocked hours, then turned them back on all at once.

He had spent his life on this ship and was attuned to her waking grumbles, sensing her generators turn over and start a brand new day. With a deep breath, Vegeta rolled to his side and stretched his legs out straight, reaching down through the balls of his feet and relishing the slight burn in his thighs and calves.

He could feel Bulma next to him, even with his eyes closed. She smelled like the cleansing products she kept in the shower, but not nearly as strong—thank the gods. The scent reminded him of…dessert. Like the crumbly topping of sweet bread, or the crackly, caramelized top layer of custard. It smelled good.

He opened his eyes, taking in the curve of her shoulder and the spill of her hair against the pillow. He hadn't closed the shade over the window before going to sleep, and the jets of photons outside the window scattered a multicolored light show across her skin and sheets. She was closer than he had realized; he could easily reach out, roll her underneath him, taste her skin instead of just smell it—

His eyes closed again and he turned onto his back with a shaky exhale.

_Fuck._

On silent feet, he padded through the bathroom and into the closet, cracking his neck and back. He flipped the light onto its dimmest setting and sifted through his uniforms. Bulma's clothing now took up most of the space, and Vegeta found that he liked it that way. His wardrobe back on Planet Vegeta had always been stuffed full of textiles and armor, so his chronically-empty closet on Frieza's ship had unnerved him since he was a boy. Curious, he reached out and ran his fingers over the fabric of a dress, feeling the soft cloth catch on his callouses and fall away in smooth ripples. It felt like…

_The features of his mother's face had long since faded into vague shapes and shadows, stonewashed by time, but he still remembered how his feet would jut out over her knees when he sat in her lap, the way her arms crossed over each other to keep him in place, and the slippery fabric of her cape in his fists._

He finished getting dressed in silence, and returned to the bedroom to sit down at the desk. The notes he had waved at Serori were still at the top of the pile, and he found a fresh sheet of paper on which to begin rewriting them in a more structured and cohesive way. The sound of his pen scratching against paper filled the room, and he paused for a moment, relishing the silence. Too soon, the ship's day would be running full throttle and there would be no rest for the weary.

The break in the sound must have disturbed Bulma's rest, because the sheets rustled as she turned to her back. She hummed and sighed and Vegeta knew that she would be awake soon. He returned to his notes, writing clearly for Nappa's sake.

"What time is it?" he heard Bulma ask a few minutes later. She patted the blankets down with a sluggish hand so she could look down the bed at him with groggy eyes.

"The clock is above the bed," he reminded her. "Look for yourself."

"I know," she replied, her eyes slipping closed for a second too long before she forced them back open. "I still don't know how to read it, though. I guess I should learn. That would probably be a smart idea."

He smirked to himself, biting back his response. She was clearly half-asleep and non-combative, and he wanted to preserve the quiet for as long as possible. "It's about 0530," he finally said.

"Are you always up this early?"

"Yes."

"Aren't you tired? I can barely keep my eyes open."

His pen stopped again. "I'm always tired," he said, dark humor edging into his voice.

She hummed in response, and Vegeta knew that she was drifting back into sleep. Soon after, he stood and stretched, rotating his wrist to shake away the dull ache that came from writing with such painstaking care. Nappa had better not complain about any of it or he was going to get a knee to the crotch—not like he was ever going to reproduce again, anyway.

He retrieved a pair of gloves and boots and slipped his armor on, regarding Bulma's slumbering form and debating whether to wake her as he adjusted the buckles at the sides. Ultimately, he decided to leave that job to Kakarott since he really didn't have much of a reason to disturb her this early in the morning.

Radditz was waiting for Vegeta outside his door with his arms crossed across his chest. He snapped to attention when the door swished open, and Vegeta spared him a quick nod before walking on down the hallway. "Everyone else is in the mess, Prince Vegeta," Radditz told him. "Once you've eaten, we'll all be ready."

"You made sure to keep Kakarott away, right?"

"Yeah," Radditz replied. "He's an optimistic little shit."

"Are you sure Bardock didn't get him off a different woman?" Vegeta asked drily.

Radditz snorted. "Nah, I was there when my mother was the size of a space pod. But Pops was more self-righteous than you give him credit for." Neither man spoke, for a moment, letting Radditz's words hang heavy in the air between them.

"Well, then," Vegeta finally said, "thank the gods you take after your mother."

The mess hall was already packed, but Nappa had saved him a seat, as always. A Roqqani woman set a tray of food down in front of him, and Vegeta tore into the food piled high on it. Down the way, Daikon pushed his tray away and wiped his mouth with the back of his glove.

"Hey," Nappa shouted, jabbing a finger at the second-class soldier, "what the fuck do you think you're doing? We're going before Frieza and you're getting food all over your clothes like a goddamned inbred brat. Get back and change your gloves before I tear the _rest_ of your hair from your head!"

Daikon rolled his eyes and jogged away from the table, stripping his gloves from his hands. Nappa continued to curse under his breath until Vegeta reached under his breastplate and handed over his notes.

"Quit wasting your breath. If he were perfect, you'd be serving him instead of me," Vegeta grunted, reaching for a jug of water. He brought it half way to his mouth, but considering his last words, he stopped halfway and used a glass instead.

Nappa pored over Vegeta's papers, taking in every word. "This ain't half-bad, my lord," he said as he finished. "Definitely risky but certainly different. We might get this one."

"Have you heard anything from the others?" Vegeta replied quietly, conscious of the others around them. Saiyan warriors took up the length of the table, loud and raucous as always, but there were certainly other races present in the mess hall that benefitted from good hearing.

Nappa shrugged and folded the papers, tucking them into his own armor. "Eh, hard to say. I've heard some rumors that the Tungas are thinking about using some sort of grid action but…it's hard to say. One thing's for sure: this one'll be fucked six ways from Sunday, no matter who gets the job."

* * *

><p>Frieza's antechamber chilled Vegeta to the bone, as always. Vegeta had never been to Frieza's icy home planet and hoped it stayed that way. Still, Vegeta had to wonder if the room's temperature had as much to do with comfort as with creating the sort of "on the edge of your seat" anticipation in guests that Frieza so enjoyed exploiting.<p>

Next to him, Serori shifted, crossing her legs and slipping her fingertips between her thighs. If they didn't have company sitting across the room, he would have elbowed her in the side and dressed her down for showing any sign of weakness that could be exploited. However, doing so in front of the Tungas would only create an opening for leverage in negotiations with Frieza, so Vegeta let it be.

The door to Frieza's inner chamber slid open, and the group of Uvarns walked out, trying to not look disappointed and failing. _Tough shit_, Vegeta thought, _if you don't think outside the box, you're going to stay stuck right where you are._

"Prince Vegeta," Dodoria called out, "Frieza's ready for you and your monkey soldiers."

Frieza's reception room was not any warmer, not that Vegeta was surprised. Frieza strolled in front of a massive table overflowing with food, picking pieces of food up, turning them this way and that, and setting them back down. "It's amazing how much stronger the stench becomes when they're actually in the room," he mused to Zarbon.

"Indeed," Zarbon replied from his lounging spot on the dais. "Let's just hear their proposal and let them go. I don't want to run behind on anything today since we have dinner with the royal family tonight."

Nodding, Frieza turned away from the food and moved back to his throne. "Zarbon makes sense, as usual," he admitted. "So, _my Prince_, what do you have for me this time? Another monkey rampage under a fake moon?"

"Not quite," Vegeta replied, looking at the spire above Frieza's throne to keep from rolling his eyes. He really didn't want to end up on the receiving end of a beating in front of his subordinates. "We've come up with something different."

Dodoria snorted in the peanut gallery. "This should be good."

Nappa stepped forward and outlined the purging plan to Frieza: Serori and the other special operations soldiers would hide themselves in supply freighters going down to the planet and subtly destabilize the planet's defense mainframe. Then, they would split up into teams and assassinate select members of the planet's civilian government and military. The final thrust of the plan would be the arrival of the rest of the Saiyan soldiers, who would utilize a false moon to transform into their Oozaru state and purge the planet.

After his speech, Nappa bowed to Frieza and stepped back into line. Zarbon puffed and squinted at the ceiling. "So after all of that, you still turn into giant monkeys? All the cloak-and-dagger killings-off seem a bit superfluous."

"It'll minimize casualties and chaos," Vegeta rebutted, looking at Frieza instead of Zarbon. "If they have two brain cells to rub together, then they've been expecting a purge for a while now—in fact, they'll _know_ it's overdue. It would be ridiculous for us to think that we can do a run-of-the-mill purge and not run up against an organized resistance. By destabilizing the defense mainframe, we can avoid atmosphere-entry combat and get our soldiers on the ground and moving. Knocking off those few targets ahead of schedule will delay the bureaucratic rallying of defensive maneuvers. Our job'll be half-finished by the time people realize anything is wrong, and you'll lose fewer soldiers as a result."

"Well, well," Frieza purred, "it looks like they _can_ think." He leaned his chin into his hand and leveled his gaze at Vegeta. "How will you split your forces?"

Vegeta barely resisted the urge to smirk in triumph, gently biting the inside of his cheek instead. "Serori and the special forces going ahead of us will reduce our general numbers by about twenty. We will divide our remaining forces into thirds; one squadron for each continent."

"And who will stay and keep your new wife company while you're away making war?" Frieza asked in a silky voice. Zarbon hummed in agreement and turned his own reptilian gaze on the Prince.

Vegeta had many years in service to Frieza under his belt, though, and it took more than teasing to make him squirm. "Kakarott will," he replied easily. "He'll be useless to us on the planet, anyway."

"Don't be stupid; just throw him out there under the fake moon and he'll be plenty useful," Dodoria muttered.

Daikon, who had been silent and still through the entire meeting, barked out a laugh and rolled his eyes. "He doesn't have a tail, sir," he informed Dodoria drily, "and you kind of need one of those."

* * *

><p>After smugly sending the Tungas on their way and letting Daikon go tend to the black eye Dodoria had given him, Vegeta and Nappa retreated to the training room. "Looks like that planning session worked out, Prince Vegeta," Nappa said, following Vegeta to the far window.<p>

Vegeta grunted in agreement, reaching into a cabinet for a water bottle and draining its contents in three swallows. Pensively, he looked out the window at Planet Roqq below, idly following the paths of orbiting satellites.

"Something on your mind?" Nappa ventured.

"Of course not."

Nappa smirked at Vegeta's snappy response and turned to look down at the shorter Saiyan. "You're acting like a damn brat."

"I hope you have a fucking good excuse for talking to me in such a familiar manner," Vegeta snarled.

"Your father put me in charge of your wellbeing—that's my excuse," Nappa replied with uncharacteristic evenness. "I've been looking after you since before you could crawl. I know what you were like as a brat so I think I have the better knowledge between the two of us to tell you when you're acting like one. Now," he said, after Vegeta huffed and cracked his neck, "tell me."

Vegeta wrapped his fingers around each other, popping the joints one by one. "It's that damned woman," he muttered.

"Serori?" Nappa asked with a frown. "I thought she did well enough—"

"No, not Serori," Vegeta said, waving his hand in dismissal and turning to lean back against the window. "Bulma."

"Is she not…pleasing?" Nappa asked, choosing his words carefully.

"What?"

"Well, she seems old enough but maybe Earthlings do things differently. I can always ask if one of the Qossac women could spend time with her and teach her—"

Vegeta audibly choked, cutting Nappa off. "Fuck," he bit out. "First, _that_ is not the problem. Second, I don't need some damned washed-up _sex slave_ to do my job for me."

Nappa grinned lewdly. "If she's fucking you so well I don't see what the problem could be, my Prince."

Rolling his eyes, Vegeta replied, "I'm _not_ fucking her, and _that's_ the problem." Beside him, Nappa blinked.

"Fucking hell, Vegeta. Didn't you just say that her skills weren't the problem?" he demanded, rubbing his head in frustration.

"It's Frieza," Serori interjected, slinking around the corner. She braced her forearm against the wall above her head and raised a brow at two men. "Isn't it?"

Nappa lunged at her, spitting fury about sneaking up on his lordship while in the middle of a personal conversation and how blood didn't make a difference in how he was going to tear her limb from limb. She easily sidestepped his bulky frame, appearing at Vegeta's side and perching on the ledge of the window. "You left the door open for all the world to hear," she told them, "and it only locks from the inside. I figured it'd be better for _me_ to eavesdrop than half the ship."

Vegeta smirked toothily at Nappa, who was still red-faced and ranting under his breath. "First you lecture me about raising me from the crib, and next you're leaving doors open? Maybe you're getting too old for this job, Nappa."

Nappa immediately stopped his sputtering, a blush rising high on his cheekbones. Serori waggled her eyebrows at him and nudged Vegeta with her elbow. "I would keep him around if I were you. D'you want Daikon raising your brats?"

Vegeta closed his eyes and shook his head. "He'd lose them in the air vents the first day," he snickered, picturing the mohawked general chasing after toddlers.

"If you have brats, that is," Serori added, turning a piercing eye on Vegeta. The grin dropped from his face at that, and his scowl returned. "Prince Vegeta, you can't let Frieza win on this—"

"If Frieza had what he wanted," Vegeta cut her off, "I would have taken her to bed the _first_ night she came on board." He took a breath, to speak again, but shook his head and clenched his jaw.

"So you haven't touched her," Serori concluded. She leaned her head back against the window and ran a hand through her hair. "How long do you think you can hold out?"

"Until Frieza tires of his game," Vegeta answered with a scoff.

Now, Nappa didn't deny that he was an old soldier, but he didn't miss the way the young Prince's fingers twitched against the windowsill. They had all seen Bulma; saying she was an attractive woman was an understatement of gross proportions. If Vegeta thought his desire could outlast Frieza's willpower, then Nappa would support him with every fiber of his being, but Nappa had years and women over his young prince and he knew _wanting_ when he saw it.

"That woman," Vegeta muttered, and then laughed. "I'm more likely to wring her neck than take her to bed."

Nappa let out a booming laugh. "The two aren't that far apart, my Prince."

* * *

><p>Bulma had her nose stuck so far down a microscope that she wouldn't have been able to tell what way was up, much less take note of her own surroundings. She had woken up alone, again, and if she hadn't noticed that the desk chair had been left pulled back, then she would have written off her quiet conversation with Vegeta this morning as some sort of lucid dream. Surprisingly, Goku had been the one to walk with her to the lab, and he had been bouncing off the walls for having been let out of his room. As they passed other Saiyans in the halls, Goku raised his hand in greeting; positive responses varied in frequency, however.<p>

Right now, though, she was examining blood samples. That Goku wasn't human hadn't occurred to anyone at all before, and now she had access to a phenomenal array of machinery that would allow her to discover all of the minute differences between Saiyan and human biology.

The lab was silent but for the sounds of her own pen against paper and the mute clicking of the scope as she adjusted the scope. She was alone; even Orja had long since left. Goku had already come by to take her back to her room, but she had been in the middle of setting up a wet mount so she told him to come back for her after his evening spar with some of the other soldiers. It was just Bulma and science, now, and that's the way the she liked it.

So, of course, she was not expecting the hand that clasped her shoulder. She screamed and blindly swung her fist behind her, hitting an armored chest with a solid _thud_. Zarbon laughed at her, as she inhaled deep, shaky breaths and pressed a hand to her heart.

"How feisty," he teased, fingering one of his earrings and slowly looking her up and down.

"That was terrifying," Bulma hissed, still feeling shivers run up and down her spine. "What—why are you dressed like that?"

Zarbon laughed and looked down at his formal armor and cape, fussing with the folds of the fabric. "The Roqqani royal family is hosting a dinner for Lord Frieza and his entourage. I could have gone with my semi-formal attire, but, if I'm being honest with myself, it's been so long since I was able to really dress up. I bet you'll look ravishing tonight, too." He reached out and brushed her hair behind her shoulders. "Your neckline is absolutely exquisite, Bulma."

She blushed fiercely and tucked her hair behind her ears. "Thank you," she said, "That means a lot, coming from you. You always look well put together."

Zarbon laughed again and waved his hand at her. "A lifetime of practice, that's all that it is," he said, brushing off her praise. "I can't believe you're _here_, though! I thought that you would be ready by now." At Bulma's blank look, Zarbon heaved a dramatic sigh and guided her off of her stool. "I just _cannot_ believe that Vegeta did not tell you about the dinner tonight, Bulma. We'll just have to hurry, then."

Bulma looked at the clock—which Orja had finally taught Bulma how to read this morning—and resisted against Zarbon's grip. "It'll be so late by the time we get there, won't it? It's probably best that I stay here; it'll be rude to interrupt—"

"The Roqq family requested your presence, and it will reflect _very badly _on Lord Frieza if you do not attend," Zarbon informed her. His voice dropped slightly and he crouched down to look straight into her eyes, holding onto her shoulders to keep her in place. "As a _guest_ here on Lord Frieza's ship, your continued happiness and freedom completely depends on his lordship's _favorable_ opinion of you. Do you understand me, Bulma?" Bulma nodded wordlessly, very aware of how solid Zarbon's hands were on her shoulders. "Of course you do. You're a smart girl."

Normally, praising her intellectual prowess would puff Bulma up with pride, but Zarbon's tone was condescending, patronizing, and it left her feeling trapped. He led her out of the room, jabbering about how he had only briefly seen Earthling fashion but he was _so_ looking forward to seeing what was in her closet. By the time they got back to her room, though, she had composed herself and found herself able to return his light banter.

"I always forget how tight these quarters are," Zarbon remarked, stopping in the middle of the room and looking from side to side, clearly measuring out the square footage in his mind. Bulma laughed, her vocal cords a bit tight, and moved around the bed, jerking the sheets into place. She waited for him to go over to Vegeta's desk and look through his papers, but, without further ado, Zarbon walked through the bathroom and into the closet.

He flipped through the dresses on the hangers, pausing every now and then. "Some of these colors are…stunning," he murmured in awe. He stopped on a buttery yellow, lifting the fabric to the dim light.

"Really? I would think you'd've seen it all," Bulma replied. She leaned against the doorjamb and watched him plunder the dresses her mother had packed.

"Oh, I have, but that doesn't make it any less true. Still, real beauty is few and far between. I mean, look at the ragged masses on this ship, and look at me," he quipped, gesturing to his face. "You don't find this on every planet." He pulled a dress off the rack and handed it to her. "I'll be out here when you're ready."

He left her in the closet, and she closed the door after him. She was surprised by his choice; if he had been so blown away by the colors, why did he choose a black one? The dress itself was not one of her easier ones to shimmy into, either, and she normally had someone helping her pull and tug and zip these dresses onto her. Still, she was able to get it over her hips and she awkwardly held the deep sweetheart neckline against her bare chest with one hand while zipping up the low back with the other.

After she finished cursing old Kami up one side and down the other, Bulma looked down at herself, adjusting the stays in the bodice and the seams along her hips. Finally, she opened the door and slowly moved out, careful to not catch the layers of tulle on anything.

"Well," Zarbon drawled as he rose up off the edge of the bathtub, "if this is your first entrance into _proper_ society, you might as well make an impression."

* * *

><p>The shuttle ride down to the planet was shorter than Bulma had expected, but Zarbon kept her relatively entertained. She engaged with him, but her mind was elsewhere and she suspected that his was, too. Besides, she had spent enough time around business executives to recognize shallow conversation. Zarbon told humorous stories about other people with rare mention of himself or his own personal feelings or thoughts. Her father's investors did that all the time—enough to keep her interest and stay on her good side, but also enough distance so as to not accidentally offend her or implicate themselves. She always found it a bit annoying, to be honest, like she was talking to a bowl of oatmeal. Zarbon's take on the play was more refined, though, she had to admit, especially since it had taken her this long to figure him out.<p>

"Surely they haven't been waiting this whole time to eat?" Bulma asked during a lull in the conversation, eyeing the clock over the door of the cabin. By her count, it was well past dinnertime. "I know Vegeta has probably destroyed something by now."

Zarbon chuckled. "Roqqani dinners are notoriously long. They start with small meals—snacks, really—in the afternoon and the larger courses have long breaks in between for walks and dancing. We'll be arriving just before the last main course."

The shuttle touched down near a large home with an extensive garden expanding out beyond the view granted by the small window Bulma peered through. "This is their summer home," Zarbon explained, reaching out a hand to steady her. "Prepare yourself; the shuttle's gravity will equalize with the planet's before the doors open."

A _clickwoosh_ was her only warning before she suddenly felt twenty pounds lighter. Her feet stayed on the floor, but she was still grateful for Zarbon's hand on her shoulder. The doors opened and they walked down the ramp. Balmy air flowed over her bare skin and she breathed deeply, relishing the clean air and floral scents. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine she was on an island vacation.

The walk up to the house was long, but easier than Bulma expected. The tulle of her dress floated _justbarely_ above the ground, so she eventually stopped worrying about stepping on any delicate edges or having to drag the mass of it around. And the lighter gravity also made the walk a significantly less exhausting trip than she had originally thought.

Zarbon barely nodded to the guards at the entrance, who bowed and held the drapes aside to let them enter. Bulma looked all around as they walked, taking in the glass-less windows and stretches of open archways where doors or walls would be. The garden came in from "outside" in the form of potted plants and ferns. Eventually, the sounds of conversation and the delicate _clinking_ of glass and china reached her ears, and that was when the butterflies started in her stomach.

Zarbon noticed the slowing in her step and turned to face her. "Come," he said in a firm voice. "There's no turning back now."

"No," she replied distantly, taking his outstretched hand. "I guess I'm out of the pan and into the fire."

Zarbon raised an eyebrow, not quite understanding the idiom, but she shook her head and moved forward with him in silence. They met another pair of guards, and Zarbon stopped to brush floating tendrils of her hair behind her shoulders as he had done in the lab only a few hours earlier. Then he murmured to one of the guards while another pulled the drapes aside. Through the gap, she saw armor and capes and heard Frieza's lazy, high-pitched voice.

"General Zarbon," the guard called out, his deep vibrato bouncing off the walls and floors. The conversation in the room instantly died down and everyone turned in their seats. "And Bulma Briefs of Earth, Princess of Saiyans."

* * *

><p>A quick thanks to Sameshima, who pointed out that our world and the DBZ world are not the same (she was talking about Bulma's explanation to Goku as to why she agreed to marry Vegeta). I know that they aren't the same, but I also know that the idea of "real" cities being leveled has a more visceral effect on readers than fictional ones, and that's the effect that I was going for. So, in my head canon for this story, West City and Mount Paozu exist, as do NYC and London, etc. Either way, it's not a major plot point, as 95% of this story takes place in space.

By the way, Bulma's dress is essentially the black mermaid dress from Zac Posen's Spring 2012 collection (the one modeled on the runway with a graphic mesh overlay on the bodice and the dramatic tulle flaring out from the knees...I can send a link through DM if you want-god, I love Posen sfm) and her hair in my head is very Angelina Jolie at the 2009 Oscars, but less poufy on top.


	5. Chapter 5

Thanks to everyone who is reviewing! I love reading your comments and am glad that you like the story so far. I hope you enjoy this chapter!

* * *

><p>"Welcome, welcome!" A man exclaimed, walking briskly to meet Bulma. "It's a pleasure, a pleasure!" He was heavy-set, with a massive red beard that bobbed as he talked. "I am King Roqqi, and welcome to my home. I am so glad to finally meet you."<p>

Bulma took his hand as he reached out for hers and kissed his cheek. "The pleasure is mine," she replied, breaking off a bit awkwardly as she didn't know whether to call him 'sir' or 'my lord,' or if any of that was even necessary.

"Well," King Roqqi sighed, placing his hands on her shoulders and taking her in, "your reputation surely precedes you, my dear. I must say that I didn't believe the rumors, but yet here you are, living proof that the universe still hides small wonders even in the most primitive of locales."

Bulma blinked, then forced a wide smile. "Oh. Thank you. I'm glad that I've…met your expectations, King Roqqi."

"Met them?" the King burst out laughing. "You've exceeded them! It's a shame you're already married, or I would have tried to snatch you away from Lord Frieza for one of my own sons!" He started laughing again, and Bulma laughed along, though with a bit less enthusiasm. She looked around for Zarbon, hoping to deflect the conversation onto him, but he had moved off to talk to another person.

A chair scraped back to her far right and she turned to lock eyes with Vegeta. He had been sitting at a small table with a few other people and was dressed up for the occasion—well, "dressed up" as compared to his normal clothing. His formal armor had gold shoulder and pelvic guards instead of brown and a red crest on the left breastplate. He walked to meet her, his red cape swishing lightly against the ground.

Bulma smiled tightly at him. She wanted to chew him out for not telling her she had to come to this thing, but she knew that _that_ was a conversation for later, behind closed doors, and not in front of all these people. So she settled on: "You look nice tonight, Vegeta."

He didn't smile back. "Don't get used to it. The cape gets in the way."

"Still, I like the gold better than the brown, I think," she said, and reached up to rub her thumb along the edge of his shoulder guard.

"Watch out, my young prince!" Roqqi interjected, shaking his finger at the two of them. "She'll be laying your clothes out for you before you know it!" He continued to chortle and meandered back to his seat while Bulma and Vegeta stared at his back. Luckily, most people in the room had returned to their own conversations, otherwise she would have wanted a hole to open in the floor and swallow her.

"Prince Vegeta," Frieza called out from a back table, "I haven't had a chance to speak to your lovely wife tonight. Bring her back here to me." He picked up a glass of dark red wine and sipped from it, not really trying to hide his smile and definitely not succeeding at it.

Bulma turned her head to find Vegeta's eyes already on her. They stared at each other for a beat, before Vegeta reached out a hand to her. She took it and allowed him to lead her through the tables. "I wish I had known that I was supposed to come with you," she whispered, leaning in close as they squeezed between some chairs.

"You and me both," he replied, glancing sideways at her.

"You didn't know?" Bulma asked in disbelief. Vegeta's silence was as much of an affirmative answer as she was going to get at this point as they reached Frieza. Vegeta bowed at the waist and pressed down on her hand, looking at her pointedly from the corner of his eye. Getting the hint about a second too late, Bulma dropped into a curtsey and dipped her head.

Frieza looked up at them and set his wine glass down. "Welcome, Bulma. I'm so sorry to have pulled you away from your work. I hear that you are quite skilled in the laboratory."

"I was a scientist back on Earth. It's where I'm most comfortable, I guess."

A sly smile curved across Frieza's lips. "Ah, yes. At Capsule Corporation, correct?"

A shiver ran down Bulma's spine and her fingers started to feel sweaty in Vegeta's grip. "Yes." She fidgeted her wrist, but Vegeta's hand tightened around hers and kept it still.

"Capsule technology is fascinating," Frieza mused. "The implications for transporting goods across the galaxy are tantalizing at the very least. It's simply astounding what one finds on these backwater planets sometimes. Right, Vegeta?" Frieza asked with a teasing tone.

"Quite," Vegeta replied tersely.

"So taciturn!" Frieza remarked. "I don't know how you do it, my dear." He raised his glass to her.

"My father," Bulma said, redirecting Frieza away from her delicate relationship with Vegeta. "Is my father…involved?" she asked, after choking down the words 'alive' and 'dead.' "With the transfer of the company, I mean."

Frieza put a finger to his chin in thought. "Oh, Dr. Briefs? Yes, he is. According to my men on the ground, he is being very helpful with all of our needs. Apparently, he asks about you quite a bit."

A gong sounded from further inside the palace. "Well, that's dinner again!" Frieza exclaimed, rising from his seat. He turned away from Bulma and Vegeta, calling over his shoulder: "You two will find your places near me."

The others milled around them, moving into the other room, but Bulma looked to Vegeta. "He's alive," she told him in a low voice, her hand pressed to her heart. "My father is alive."

His eyes dropped from hers for a moment, running along the line of her bare shoulder, lost in thought, before he dragged them back up. "That's…good to hear," he told her, his voice stiff but still genuine. She'd heard enough of his taunting and witticisms to be able to tell it apart now.

"Yes," she replied with a broad smile and bright eyes, "it is."

He cleared his throat and tossed his head in the direction of the dining room. "Let's go. I'm starving." Bulma felt him tug on her hand and followed his lead through the doorway and to their seats near Frieza. His grip of his gloved hand remained firm and strong, acting as anchor for her to latch onto in this strange situation. She glanced at his profile and took the line of his strong eyebrows drawn down over his straight nose, the way the muscles in his cheek twitched every now and then as he clenched his jaw, his tanned skin framed by his shock of black hair and the drape of red cloth fluttering behind him.

"You know," she jibed quietly, feeling brave and straightening her elbow to press the insides of their forearms together, "you're still handsome even with that mean look on your face."

Vegeta stuttered in his stride and Bulma snickered. "You have good bone structure," she shrugged.

* * *

><p>The Roqq family had certainly done their homework on their guests; a single plate was placed before Bulma and a platter in front of Vegeta, who sat on her immediate right. By the time Bulma had finished one of her sides—some kind of creamed grain—a server had taken away Vegeta's decimated tray and replaced it with another.<p>

To her left, Frieza made small talk with King Roqqi, with whom he shared the head of the table. Bulma deliberately tuned them out, not interested at all in whatever they could be discussing. Vegeta was intent on inhaling his food, so Bulma ate in silence, chewing thoroughly and glancing around at the decorations to take up time.

"I see that you are admiring our chandeliers," King Roqqi said, leaning forward to ensure Bulma heard him.

She had just stuffed a roll into her mouth so she nodded over and over while she frantically chewed. "Yes," she finally said, pointing at the massive lights. "They're…huge."

Roqqi laughed, tilting his head back. "And heavy! It takes five or six people to wrangle them!"

Bulma nodded and dabbed at her lips with a napkin. "I can imagine."

"By the way," Roqqi exclaimed, winking in her direction and gesturing at one of the servants, "I have something for you. A wedding gift!"

Bulma looked at Vegeta, who showed no signs of slowing down, and back at Roqqi. "Oh, no, that's not necessary—"

"Nonsense!" Roqqi boomed, cutting her off, taking a wooden box from the servant and passing it to her over the table. "I'm glad for it!"

When she popped the top off the box, Bulma's eyes grew as round as saucers and her mouth dropped open. "This is—I can't accept this."

"What is it?" Frieza asked, "My lord Roqqi is famous for his beautiful gifts."

Bulma turned the box to Frieza, showing him the gem-encrusted necklace, replete with a colossal dark red pendant. "It's too much," Bulma said. Every piece of multi-million dollar loaner jewelry that had ever dripped off of her paled in comparison.

"Don't be ridiculous," Frieza sniffed, waving his hand. "Roqq is famous for its jewels. In fact, one could say that it is good advertising."

"Oh, my lord Frieza, you see right through me!" Roqqi joked. "You must take it, your grace. It would make me extremely happy to know that the Princess of the Saiyans wears Roqqi jewels."

The title still threw her, even after hearing it so often. It was a stark reminder of her new life, and how she would never be just "Bulma" again.

"But I hear that Earth has an unimaginable bounty of resources," she registered King Roqqi saying to Frieza. "That must excite your commercial nature!"

"Of course," Frieza drawled. "It's remarkable; it's a small planet, but there are billions of inhabitants. The atmosphere and gravity has provided a utopia in a desert of star systems. The humans have no idea how extraordinary their environment is and how much their reserves will sell for on the market."

"I hear there are even jewel mines," Roqqi grinned. "Not that they could match ours, of course."

Frieza laughed and smiled indulgently at Roqqi. "You are comparing two completely different classes, I'm afraid. The stones produced on Earth are smaller than the ones produced here, which is why I'm sure the Princess reacted the way that she did when she saw your gift. Anyway, the jewels aren't the biggest catch on that rock. There's an abundance of salt and timber; that's what I'm most interested in."

"At this moment at least," Roqqi joked. "I know you too well! You won't be satisfied with that for long!"

"And now you see right through me," Frieza replied.

Bulma spoke before she could stop herself. "You're going to sell our wood and salt? How much of it?"

"As much as pleases me, my dear," Frieza said. He watched as she looked back at her plate and pushed her food around. "Does this displease you?" Bulma could hear the smirk in his voice.

"Of course it does," she said, forcing herself to maintain a level tone. "It's my home and you're planning on stripping it bare."

The words were barely out of her mouth when she felt something latch onto her thigh, right above her knee. She knew without looking that it was Vegeta's hand; from the corner of her eye, she could see that he had stopped eating. He drank from his glass but was otherwise still. She shifted her leg in an attempt to shake him off, but his grip remained.

Frieza made no sign that he noticed the battle of wills taking place underneath the table, and leveled a predatory gaze at Bulma. "It's your home, it's Kakarott's home, it's the home to billions of other humans. It makes no difference to me; I'm a businessman and I follow profits. You can understand that, surely, given your own corporate background. You and I both know that both in nature and in business, the strong take what they can and the weak suffer what they must."

"They're not all weak, you know," Bulma said softly, "the humans."

Vegeta inhaled sharply and his fingers tightened again, jolting her leg a bit.

Frieza smiled slowly at her. "Do you think your husband is strong, Bulma?"

Bulma shook her head, confused by the change in topic. "What?"

"I said, do you think that your husband, prince of the monkeys, is strong?" Frieza repeated slowly, pausing a few times for emphasis.

Bulma looked at Vegeta, who stared back at her with intense black eyes. She could tell he was trying to silently tell her to _shut the fuck up_. "Yes," she replied, turning back to Frieza. "I've heard that he's very strong."

"And do you think his men are strong?"

Bulma was smart enough to know that Frieza would eventually lead her to a conclusion, so she answered: "Yes, I know that they are some of the strongest in your fleet."

Frieza's smile widened a bit and his gaze shifted to Vegeta. When he spoke, though, it was to Bulma. "Then I think you should ask your husband what happened to his planet."

* * *

><p>The rest of the dinner was uneventful. Vegeta completely withdrew from Bulma and ate in silence, and she followed suit. Frieza did not antagonize them further. With a heavy heart, Bulma wished that she had somehow convinced Zarbon to leave her in the lab so that the highlight of her night would have been catching up with Goku.<p>

When the party dispersed, Roqqi bid everyone goodnight at the door. Frieza went ahead of everyone down the garden path, clearly done with society for the night. Zarbon gracefully loped after him, catching up and bending down to whisper in his lord's ear.

Bulma was one of the last out. "Thank you," she said to him. "Everything was beautiful."

Roqqi winked at her. "I'm glad you enjoyed it." He turned his head and eyed Vegeta, who waited impatiently for Bulma at the edge of the veranda. "He's a tough nut to crack, isn't he, my dear?"

Bulma scoffed. "You're assuming he's crackable."

"He visited here once before, as a boy," Roqqi mused, his face softening with nostalgia. "The gravity here is lighter, you know, and he spent the afternoon doing gymnastics all through the gardens." The king gestured at the manicured lawns, sweeping his arms wide.

With a smile, Bulma tried to imagine a miniature Vegeta playing around and doing somersaults for fun. "I have to say, I can't really picture him horsing around or laughing. He must have changed a lot over the years."

"Oh, no, no, he hasn't," Roqqi said, tugging on his beard. "He was completely serious. It was practice, I'm sure. But I watched him while I took my tea and every now and then he would land a _perfect_ tumbling pass."

He paused, and Bulma allowed him, and they watched Vegeta scuff his boot against the ground and crack his neck. "And?" Bulma asked, her eyes following the slow billow of the prince's cape as a breeze swept past.

"It made him happy," he stated. Bulma raised her eyebrows, and Roqqi shrugged. "The universe is an unhappy place, and life is short."

"That was a hell of a segue."

Roqqi put his finger next to his nose and winked at her, for the 100th time that night, it seemed. "When life gives you carbon, make diamonds," he joked. "Now, off with you! Safe travels!"

"About time," Vegeta said. "We're going to be last in line for docking." He stalked off without any goodbye to Roqqi, so Bulma waved for him over her shoulder.

Roqqi watched them go down the path, Vegeta with his arms crossed and pretending to be oblivious of Bulma, who slowed her gait to walk next to him when she had caught up. Next to her husband's black shock of hair and the dark grey of her own dress, her distinctive blue hair seemed like an oasis in the desert. They fell into step with each other, and Roqqi laughed quietly.

"They make quite the couple," he said to himself. "Frieza has overestimated himself on this one."

The princess was far enough away now; she would not hear a noise on the veranda. Serori stepped around the column she had been hiding behind and snapped King Roqqi's neck.

* * *

><p>Neither Bulma nor Vegeta spoke the rest of the way back to their room. Vegeta stood by the window of the shuttle while Bulma sat on a bench, feeling leaden and sluggish after the shuttle recalibrated to the heavier gravity of the ship. He had been right; they found themselves in a bit of a traffic jam while trying to dock. Once the doors opened, Vegeta immediately jumped onto the dock, bypassing the steps that Bulma had to use because of her dress.<p>

The ship was dim and quiet now. It was well into nighttime, so the hallways were clear for the first time that Bulma could remember. Vegeta scowled down the narrow passageways, and she knew some sort of nasty outburst was coming. At their door, Bulma stood back while he punched the code and let him enter first. He immediately unpinned his cape and tossed it onto the chaise, then tugged his armor up over his head.

"So there you have it," he said. "Dinner with Frieza. I take it you enjoyed it?"

She didn't answer him right away, watching from the quasi-foyer as he stripped off his whiter-than-white gloves and toed off his boots. He crouched down by the bed and pulled out a wide black box with a hinged top. "Did you really not know that I was supposed to come?" She asked instead, revisiting their earlier conversation.

"You weren't 'supposed' be to there. You don't have any formal training," he replied under his breath. He opened the top of the box and set his formal armor into it, followed by his boots and gloves. Bulma picked up his cape and folded it quickly, handing it to him. He snatched it from her and dropped it into the box on top of everything. Still, as the fabric settled over the armor, it slipped and revealed a bit of the crest on the breastplate. Vegeta, about to slam the top shut, paused for a fraction of a second and eyed it. His mouth tightened, and he shut the case and shoved it back under the bed.

With that, Bulma realized that none of this was about her. It was about him. He and Frieza had been locked in a power play long before she had come onto the scene. Marrying the two of them had been as much about Frieza showing his power to her and Earth as it had been about reinforcing his power over _Vegeta_.

She sighed, feeling drained, and walked into the bathroom. She dropped Roqqi's gift on the counter and started taking off her rings. Vegeta picked up on the shift in her attitude and followed her, watching from the doorway as she took out her earrings and started pulling the pins from her hair. They stood in each other's company for a few minutes while she ran her fingers through her hair to loosen the hairspray and wiped her make up off.

"So what happened?" she finally asked, looking at him in the mirror. "To your planet?"

His dark eyes met hers in the reflective glass, and he held her gaze steadily. He uncrossed his arms and set on hand on his hip. "Freiza destroyed it. Blew it up," Vegeta said, holding up a finger and letting a small ball of ki form at its tip.

"Why?" Bulma watched the ball of light spin and grow bigger before Vegeta released it, allowing the energy to harmlessly disperse.

He regarded her for a moment, deciding whether or not all of this was worth his while. She waited patiently, resting her hands on the counter. Finally, he began to talk. "Raditz and Kakarott's father led a revolt on Planet Vegeta. He claimed he had some visions of the future, which may have been true. He had just finished on Planet Kanassa and the Kanassans are all seers. He led a battalion into space, tried to take on Frieza, and got blasted to smithereens, taking our planet with him. The Saiyans on this ship are all that are left of us, save for a handful that are scattered to the four corners of the galaxy for one reason or another."

"Your parents were on the planet?"

He barked out a dark laugh. "No. My mother had been dead for a long time before that. My father was killed by Frieza right before he obliterated the planet."

"Then why aren't you the _King_ of Saiyans?" she asked with a tilt of her head.

Vegeta sighed and closed his eyes. His shoulders slumped minutely. "Don't ask stupid questions, woman," he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose.

_His hands look weird without gloves_, she caught herself thinking, and then almost laughed at the absurdity of it. They had been married for a good amount of time and his bare hands were still a novelty. He was always in uniform, always a soldier. With just his blue jumpsuit on, he looked almost normal.

She turned around and leaned back against the counter. "What now?" Vegeta grumbled, avoiding her eyes.

"Thank you for telling me," she told him sincerely.

"Whatever," he said, rolling his eyes. But he stayed in the doorway, and eventually his eyes circled back around to her, flitting away from her eyes when she met his gaze squarely and settling on her shoulder instead. He crossed his arms, and Bulma understood that he was severing his previous openness. She wanted to feel that again.

With two steps, she was in front of him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and leaning in to kiss him. His arms dropped and his hands landed on her hips, holding her still. Vegeta opened his mouth, trying to talk, and Bulma shifted and nipped at his lower lip. He knew that he should push her away, to keep her at the safe distance that he had been maintaining, but Bulma pushed her hips against his. He felt the swell of her breasts and the brave slide of her tongue and he was _done_.

He did push her away, but only until her back hit the opposite doorjamb, and he was right behind her anyway. _He_ kissed _her_ this time, without preamble and without teasing, and he wrapped his arms around her waist to pull her hard against the line of his body. She half-gasped, half-moaned and fisted a hand in his hair, tilting her head to meet him.

The intensity of his embrace startled her more than anything. She wasn't blind; she knew that Vegeta saw she was a woman, but Bulma had expected to have to cajole him a little while longer. Here she was, though, breathing heavily and weak-kneed as he whisked control straight out of her hands. His mouth moved away from hers, and his arms tightened, hitching her onto her toes to reach her collar bones. His tongue hit the swell of her breast and Bulma sighed, her head falling back to thud against the doorjamb. His shoulders moved under her arms; she felt the cords rippling as he shifted her weight back onto her heels. Her head was fuzzy, and she ran her hands from his neck to the curve of his shoulders.

"How does this come off?" he asked in a low voice, hooking a finger in the bodice of her dress. His other hand curved over her buttock and rocked her hips forward into his. His thickness pressed against the inside of her hip, and she almost swallowed her tongue at the feel of it. "Tell me," he murmured against her neck, encouraging her with his fingertips to roll her hips against his again.

"Zipper. In the back," she breathed. His hands moved behind her, searching for the tab, and she gripped his biceps. Vegeta seemed distracted for a moment, so she leaned forward and took his earlobe between her teeth, biting down gently, then sucking. He jerked, and then his fingers found the tab and he jerked it down, shoving her dress down with it.

Without further ado, he crouched a bit, grabbed her thighs, and carried her the short steps to the bed. He dropped her onto it and followed, shedding his jumpsuit on the way. If Bulma had thought that he was dangerous while they were standing up, he was even more so once he got horizontal. The frenzy of his first touches died down, replaced by intent focus. She ached by this point, and every swipe of his palm and brush of his fingers only wound her tighter. "Vegeta," she breathed, her voice cracking when his tongue swirled into her navel, "Vegeta." He reached up a hand to cover her mouth, but she turned her head and caught two of his fingers, sucking hard. He groaned in approval and surged back up, snatching his hand away so that he would have space to kiss her.

She reached down, guiding him, and cried out as he followed where she led him. He cursed breathlessly against her neck, arched back because of something between pleasure and pain. She had thought that maybe the thick material of her dress and her own desire had lied to her earlier, but no, they hadn't.

They moved together, urging each other faster, higher, closer with lips and teeth and grasping fingers. He tugged on her hair and she shuddered with the first tingling of an orgasm. Growling her name, he did it again, and she bowed backwards and upwards with a shout, her fingernails like anchors in his sides. He was shaking already, so when she nudged him forward with the leg around his hip, he didn't last much longer.

He pulled her with him onto his back and kissed her with a lazy tongue, only letting her go when she pushed insistently at his chest. She crawled over him and walked to the bathroom with as much grace as she could.

"Give it up," Vegeta called. "If you can still walk in a straight line, we did it wrong and you need to come back."

She blushed, flipped him the bird and then disappeared around the corner. He heard the water running and the toilet flush while he forced himself up out of the bed. He straightened the coverlet and cleaned himself off with his jumpsuit before collapsing onto his side of the bed. He felt pleasantly lethargic and his body still hummed with rushing blood and endorphins. Distantly, he wondered if it would have been this good at the beginning, if he had acted on his hunger when he first saw her. (Well, not when he _first_ saw her; it would have been rude to fuck her in front of her father.) Instead of letting her wallow in her misery, he could have taken her to bed and avoided all of the worthless angst that had permeated the room for so long.

Bulma reappeared and clambered up beside him on the bed. She pushed the blankets down and shimmied underneath to lie down on her stomach and press her face into her pillow. "I need to bring you to more of these shitty formal events," he said, tossing an arm over his eyes.

"Someone's in a good mood," she teased, and peeked up at him out of one eye.

He smirked and rolled over to nip at her shoulder. She shivered. "I'll be back to normal in the morning," he promised.

"Looking forward to it," she said, trying for a dry voice but unable to muster the harsh sarcasm. She'd just had some of the best sex of her life, Vegeta was actually being pleasant, and she didn't want to ruin the moment. He turned onto his back and kicked his way underneath the sheets.

The mattress shifted as they burrowed down under the covers, brushing each other's skin now and then. She thought about reaching out to him and drawing up to his side, but in that same moment, she knew that moment had already passed. Her body was heavy enough anyways, and sleep came quickly.

* * *

><p>"I daresay that the little prince was not amused with our schemes tonight."<p>

"No, he wasn't. I thought his head would explode."

"That would have been interesting to see. A bit messy for my tastes, though, unfortunately."

"Your fastidiousness never ceases to amaze. Why you became a soldier boggles the mind."

"Bulma looked radiant, at least."

"Don't tell me you're getting attached."

"Don't worry, I'm not."

"Anyway, Vegeta is far too easy to set off. I didn't think she would get under his skin quite like that. I half-thought he was going to either pop her head off or gag her every time she opened her mouth."

"The other Saiyans think she's pretentious and disrespectful. Hearing about tonight will only exacerbate that. Oh, don't smirk like that, my lord. It's not attractive."

"Politics isn't attractive. Enough about the monkey prince, let's talk about something more pleasant…"

* * *

><p>Sooooooo...thoughts?<p>

"The strong take what they can while the weak suffer what they must" is a line from Thucydides' "History of the Pelopponnesian War" and is considered a hallmark of political realism. I thought it suited Frieza's mindset about….well, everything.


	6. Chapter 6

Hey, everyone! Hope you all are having a great summer. Mine's been busy since I'm getting ready to move in early August. I've been travelling some to visit family and friends, which is why this took a while, and I start school again soon, but I'm trying to combat laziness and writer's block so I can get this story moving along. Enjoy!

* * *

><p>Dimly, Bulma registered that she was kind of cold. She flung a hand down and tugged the duvet up over her shoulder, tucking her stuffed fist under her chin. That was better. Nothing felt as good as sleeping naked under fresh sheets.<p>

Naked.

Sex.

Vegeta.

She peeked under the blankets and moved her thighs against each other. Yep, that was real. Sighing, she lifted herself up onto her elbows to look at the clock. A bit before 6:00 AM (she guessed, she really did need to take the time to learn all the symbols), and Vegeta was still slumbering next to her.

"Hey," she said. Her voice sounded horrible, so she swallowed a couple times and coughed before trying again. "Vegeta, wake up."

"What."

"You're awake?"

He turned his head towards her but otherwise kept his eyes closed. "Ever since you kneed me in the ass and cocooned yourself in all the blankets."

Bulma looked down, and sure enough, only the very edge of the duvet covered Vegeta; the rest of them were mashed up around her body. "Anyway," she sniffed, unwrapping herself and shoving some of the duvet towards him, "it's nearly six. Aren't you going to be late for…whatever it is that you do all day?"

He grabbed a fistful of the blankets and pulled them across his hips. "Not today. I don't have to leave for a bit. Go back to sleep and stay over there."

But Bulma was not in the mood to go back to sleep, and Vegeta was naked just like she was. She pounced, straddling his hips and holding onto his shoulders when he jumped underneath her.

"Have you lost your fool mind?" he blustered.

She grinned at him. "Some people _have_ postulated that my father and I are mad scientists."

Vegeta, now recovered from Bulma's sneak attack, rolled his eyes. "So this isn't a new condition, then."

"Oh, no, quite genetic," she replied, and then shrieked as he flipped her onto her back. His hands skimmed down her ribs and she cautioned him to be gentle, and he was, so her cautions turned to sighs, and there was nothing left to say.

* * *

><p>Something was up; he could feel it. His brother had let him out of his room at seven and then disappeared. Since then, Goku hadn't seen any other Saiyans, not even in the mess hall where he had eaten his breakfast. He wondered if the Saiyans had gone off on a special training trip and that was why all of the other warrior classes on board were so annoyed this morning. But why wouldn't they have taken him? His brother and the others were always complaining about how he wasn't Saiyan enough and that he needed to 'learn their ways.'<p>

Well, he had seen their attitudes and heard about their ways, and he wanted no part of it. When he walked around the ship with other Saiyans, everyone else moved out of their way and kept their eyes down. No one else talked to him, not even in the mess that morning when he had been sitting all alone. He had waved at a passing Rogodyll and invited him to sit, but the lower-class warrior had bustled past without even answering. And the other day during training, he had overheard Nasu and Kabocha talking about how they had "purged" a city on another planet. They argued about the women and how they screamed…

So much death surrounded the Saiyans.

He knocked on Bulma and Vegeta's door and overheard Bulma scrambling around on the other side. Finally, she opened the door and the overwhelming smell of sweat and flesh and sex nearly bowled him over. Bulma was talking to him about how she needed just another minute, and Goku shook his head to clear it.

"I'll wait out here," he told her, consciously _not looking_ at the rumpled bed in his peripheral vision. "Really, it's fine. Take your time." He reached through the doorframe, flashing a reassuring smile at Bulma, and pressed the button to close the door. With a heavy sigh, Goku stepped backward and leaned against the far wall of the hallway. He pressed his hand over his eyes and tried to cover the smell of the prince's room with that of the recycled air of the ship. It didn't work too well.

"_Goku," Chi Chi sighed, drawing out the last syllable of his name as he firmly moved her hips back and forth over his own. She was beautiful, with drops of sweat running in between her swollen breasts and slipping over her belly. He slid a hand to where she was wet and warm and she gasped and dug her nails into his chest, her own palms losing traction on his slick skin- _

"Okay! I'm ready!" Bulma broke into his memories, and he bolted upright from his slouch. "Are you alright?"

Goku grinned wide. "Never better."

She peered at him with narrowed eyes, so Goku clapped his hands and walked down the hall. "What're you working on in the lab these days?" he asked over his shoulder, luring her away from the door.

"Medical stuff," she replied. "I've been going through some samples and acquainting myself with the different biological makeup of the groups aboard. Orja says I have to get familiar with everyone before she lets me off desk duty."

"I thought you only built things. Invented machines and robots."

Bulma shrugged. "It's my forte, of course, and I would have preferred to be doing maintenance, but I doubt anyone trusts me enough to let me near any of the ship's engineering."

"Tell me about it," Goku replied, weaving through the janitor crew. "I'm still locked in my room overnight. What…does Vegeta say about that, by the way?"

"_Half-wit Saiyan…"_ "Umm," Bulma stalled, looking innocent, "he says he doesn't know you well enough to judge."

Goku frowned at her. "We spar a lot, though."

"Yeah, well, you know. He gets intense and…focuses…on the stances and…attacks and stuff. But I'll tell him to think about it, okay? You'll get a good character reference from me." Bulma shot him the thumbs up with both hands as she backed through the door of the lab.

Goku set his hands on his hips. "It's like she doesn't think I know she can't ride Nimbus," he muttered to himself.

Since no one else was around, Goku shadowboxed for while. It was nice, really, to train in solitude. He understood why Tien liked it. A fighter could really focus on his own form and technique instead of the other guy's. Or girl's, he admitted grudginly…Paseri had clocked him pretty well when he told her he didn't like to fight girls. The other Saiyans really liked trying to kick the crap out of him, too, like he had personally offended them by existing. _They_ had been the ones to pull him onto the ship, but he wasn't about to voice that fact around them—that might actually get him a one-on-one with Vegeta.

To be honest, he liked the prince well enough but Goku knew Vegeta got frustrated sparring with him. The other Saiyans yielded quickly in fights with their prince by pulling punches or avoiding sore spots until Vegeta pounded them into the mats, but Goku didn't believe in that. A fight was a fight, and whether they were going to first blood or until the last man standing, a fighter had to give it his or her all. Unfortunately for the both of them, Goku and Vegeta were almost too evenly matched. Their fights ended in draws more often than victories, and Vegeta wasn't a fan of that.

Maybe that was why Vegeta sparred with Serori or Nappa most of the time—they were always in it to win it and very intelligent fighters, but Vegeta always came out on top, even if just by the skin of his teeth.

Goku paused for a moment to wipe the sweat off his face and chug a bottle of water. Vegeta was a tough guy to figure out, that was for sure, but it seemed like Bulma had made some sort of breakthrough. She'd always talked about being the Capsule Corp princess, so maybe she'd finally found her prince. What a weird combination, Bulma and Vegeta. She had dated Yamcha for so long, and Goku knew it had carried on because she had the desert bandit wrapped around her finger. (Well, at least until he discovered other city women, but Goku tried to not judge his friend's sex life.) He would say that he wished Bulma knew what she was doing, but it's not like she had much of a choice of spouses…

Motion outside the windows of the training room cut through his concentration. He jogged over to the door and watched as several of Frieza's guards ran past with their scouters powered on. "What's going on?" He asked, snagging the arm of a harried passerby.

"The Roqqani are riotin'," the woman replied. "They found out about the purge and they've started a fight on C deck."

"Purge? What are you talking about?"

She looked him up and down and shook his hand from her arm. "You're Saiyan, aren't ya? Why aren't you down there on Roqq with the rest of 'em?"

Goku stood with his mouth agape as the woman was swept away with the crowd. Down the hall, a cart fell to the ground with a clatter, scattering food and plates across the floor.

_C deck_. Bulma's lab was on C deck.

With his heart in his throat, Goku turned and sprinted down the hallway, pushing people aside in his rush. In the stairwell, he hugged close to the wall to slip past the guards that clustered together in the center. Three agonizing flights lay between him and C deck, and he took the stairs two at a time when he could. Finally, the hatch appeared before him and he joined the crush of bodies pushing their way into the hall.

Immediately, all the guards moved left, and Goku saw that most of the action was being contained towards the forward part of the ship, near the laundry and kitchen facilities where most Roqqani worked. Luckily, the lab was aft, and so Goku ran up the hall, dodging soldiers and disgruntled civilians until he reached the bank of lab windows. His stomach dropped when he looked inside and saw a deserted room, but his scouter blinked and whirred, giving him the energy signatures of people inside. With quick fingers, he opened the door and entered the lab, looking right and left.

Goku could have cried when he saw Bulma and some of the other technicians huddled underneath the window casements, eyes wide and panicked. "Come on," he said to Bulma, reaching his hand out.

"What about them?" she asked, gesturing to her co-workers even as she grasped onto Goku's hand.

He grimaced, looking between the frightened scientists and the chaos outside. Taking all of them would call too much attention… "Go as far into the back rooms as you can, back where you keep the patients," he instructed urgently over the raucous melee outside, pointing to the doors that led out of the front room. "Stay low, and be quiet. Close all of the doors and lock them if you can." Wordlessly, the group followed Goku's directions, moving quickly between desks and through the door. "I've got to get you out of here," Goku said, helping Bulma off the floor. "Stay next to me."

Bulma nodded and grabbed onto the crook of his elbow. "I don't know what's going on," she told him. "I was preparing wet mounts and then people started shouting. Orja went outside and I haven't seen her since."

Goku steered them out of the lab and set a fast pace. Up ahead, he saw that the line held by the soldiers just a few minutes ago had been breached and the Roqqani were moving their fight further up the halls. Goku hoped that the scientists were far and away into the bowels of the lab by now and wouldn't get caught in the chaotic crossfire between the Roqqani and Frieza's soldiers.

Screams and bellows bounced off the walls and he cringed as lights burst into shards of glass and sparks above his head, victims of stray shots of ki. He wrapped his arm around Bulma's shoulders and hugged her tight to his side.

"What's happened?" she asked, looking up into his face. "Why are they so angry?"

Goku glanced down at her, and she could see the muscles working in his jaw. Some of the Roqqani running their way caught sight of them, and Goku saw pain and sorrow and madness in their eyes. "Their planet is being purged by the Saiyans right now," he answered, urging her closer to the wall. "Keep your head down." He had a sudden burst of clarity: he should have just left her alone and let her hide in the lab with the others. This was a bad, _bad_ idea.

He was right.

"Fucking Saiyan!" one of them screamed, lunging at Goku and pounding at him with fists. The Roqqani were weak, however, and employed as cooks and servants, so Goku put up an arm to shield his face and pushed forward. Another one joined in, beating at his back, but Goku pushed them aside broke into a run towards the stairwell, dragging Bulma after him.

"It's Vegeta's wife!" another yelled.

"Get her!"

"We'll leave him a welcome home present on his door step!"

Bulma sprinted next him, her hand clutched tight in his. A woman called out to cut her up so she'd fit into a nice gift box and Bulma yelped next to him as she jerked backwards out of Goku's grip. He slid to a stop and whirled around, seeing her sprawled on her backside with a Roqqani's fist in her hair.

"No!" he screamed, reaching out for her, but a group of them jumped on him and slowed him down. More Roqqani ran over to Bulma and obscured her from view. He heard flesh meeting flesh, fabric rending, and Bulma shrieking, and Goku flung away the bodies weighing him down like gnats. Their bodies smashed into the walls and one of them gurgled blood in her throat somewhere to his left, but he left that behind him to grab limbs and yank people off the pile.

More gloved hands joined his, and he looked over to see the profile and scouter of a soldier. "Where have you been?" He demanded in a desperate voice, but the soldier barely spared him a glance. Footsteps thundered from behind him and within moments, the mob was pulled off of Bulma. She scrambled backwards to sit back against the wall, covering her face with her hands.

"Hey, hey," Goku called out to her, gently touching her bare shoulder. Her blouse was shredded, and the sleeve slumped towards her elbow. She pushed her hair back with her hands and eyed the cordon of soldiers behind Goku who were yelling and shoving the Roqqani against the wall. "C'mere, there ya go…"

A soldier spared them a brief glance, saying, "Get her out of here, or I'll do it for you." So Goku grabbed Bulma's hands and tugged her up.

"Can you walk?" he asked, and she nodded and began to move down the hall. The Roqqani knelt against the wall, staring Bulma down, and she stared right back as she passed them. When they reached the hatch, she stepped through it without missing a beat and began to climb the stairs, taking them two at time when she could.

"Hey, don't push yourself."

She looked over her shoulder at him with watery eyes and then shook her head. "I want to be far away, so I don't hear it when it happens," she said quietly, and moved faster as if she had fallen behind.

They made their way back to Bulma and Vegeta's quarters, where Bulma sank down onto the end of the bed.

"I would ask if you wanted to go to the medbay but..." Goku offered, stopping short of stating the obvious.

"No, it's fine," Bulma replied, rotating her bruised wrists. "Nothing's broken. If you would just get me the blue squeeze tube in the left drawer of the bathroom—I can put that where they—where the skin is broken."

Goku stayed with her, following her instructions when she couldn't reach and chattering away to distract her as the medicine sank into her raw flesh. When she silently drew the desk chair to the window and propped her feet on the ledge with her back to him, he knew it was time to take advantage of the quiet and laid down on the chaise to nap. It was a while before his mind slowed down enough to let him rest.

* * *

><p>The worst part of a purge was the fuckin' smoke. Paseri sniffed, trying to clear her sinuses and failing. An explosion boomed off in the distance and rattled the walls of the office she was in—Daikon was getting his men started early on leveling the capital.<p>

She picked over the jewels in the case before her. The rocks were massive—she was gonna have to chose wisely. What was it her aunt had recited over and over again? Cut, color, and something else…c…cl…clarity. Clarity. That was it. Something about carrots, too, but that didn't make any fucking sense. Whatever; her aunt had been a nut-job, hoarding the family heirlooms in a filthy hovel in Vegeta City.

Cut and color didn't mean a damn thing to Paseri anyway, but she held up the gems to the window to find the clearest, biggest ones in the batch.

"Don't you look like a jewel shark."

Paseri started and looked over her shoulder at her twin brother. "Kabocha, where the hell did you come from?"

"The hallway, where do you think?"

"Shit. This thing is shot to hell." Scowling, Paseri tugged her scouter off and tossed it onto the table.

"Are you supposed to be doing that yet?" Kabocha asked, stirring his fingers through the jewels. "The prince usually gets priority on jobs like this."

"Nah, Prince Vegeta said the squadron captains got first pick in their zones. Go on," Paseri offered graciously (for her at least), "I'll let you snag one or two before I let the others in to scrabble over the leavings. It'd be a pretty little gift for that Qossac you like so much."

Kabocha winked one of his weird gray eyes at her. They'd shared their mother's belly and their father's smart mouth but that was it. Where he was tall and lithe, she was short and broad-shouldered. His black hair and gray eyes put the whores on their backs faster than the officer's pay he threw their way, while her muddy brown hair and black eyes let her blend in with the men without a second glance in her direction. Kabocha teased her about being the ugly one, but she didn't give a fuck. Looking like a maenad didn't mean you knew how to use it, and the men that came to her knew that she was as good at sex as she was in the field.

"I don't like her this much," he said, waving a hunk of gleaming green in his sister's direction. "Anyway, at least now we don't have to save the big-ticket items for _her majesty_."

Paseri scoffed. "I heard she got a massive firestone from Roqqi last night."

"Wonder if she'll wear it under her scrubs."

The image of Vegeta's earthling wife running around in casual clothes and a massive Roqqani necklace made Paseri laugh. "Doubtful. Radditz says she already wears a necklace of…what did he say they were? Like, fuckin' white pebbles or something. Here, what do you think of this one?" She flicked a small, untumbled firestone at him.

Kabocha swore under his breath. "Can we swap? This verdinite is already cut, it'll be an easier sale."

"Fuck no. You know that's a damned lie. Give it back." Paseri snagged the gem from his hand and tucked it into her jumpsuit.

"Man, I could have bought out an entire Ryo brothel for three nights off that. You'd better not waste it."

"Please," Paseri sniffed, rolling her eyes. "Anyway, I heard that she was a real chatterbox last night, too. Brought up stuff that would have gotten _us_ killed in a second."

Swinging his legs up onto the windowsill, Kabocha shrugged. "Doesn't surprise me. If it hadn't come from Nappa himself, I wouldn't have believed that she mouthed off to the Prince in front of the workers in the lab when she first got here and came away without a scratch."

"Well, earthlings are weak. I'm sure touching her leaves a bruise."

"Still," he said, spreading his arms wide. "I don't care if she's the damned queen of the Earth, she should still show respect and loyalty. HEY! What in the seven hells do you think you're doing?" he shouted at some third-class soldiers down by the mine opening. "Well, spar over there! If that tunnel collapses because you've got shit for brains I'll deliver you to Dodoria my own fuckin' self! I ain't covering for stupid!"

Paseri tugged the tie of her little bag closed, the gems clinking lightly against each other as she tied it inside her breastplate. "They'll be less antsy once they get to tear into the loot. Let's get back down there. I want to wrap this show up quickly so I can get back to the ship and take a damn shower. At this rate I'm gonna smell like a pyre for a fucking week."

Kabocha followed her out of the building, just like he had followed her out of their mother's womb and up the ranks of the military until he sat right below her as her lieutenant. Outside, they shouted orders at their subordinates and then rose slowly into the air to observe the larger area from above.

Paseri crossed her arms and ankles, drifting with the wind currents. "Remember, my scouter's fucked up so let me know if something shows up on yours."

"Will do," Kabocha replied from a few feet below. She watched him float in circles, observing the action below, and then closed her eyes against the dust and smoke for a few minutes.

"Watch what you say on the ship," she cautioned. "About Prince Vegeta's wife, I mean. Don't go spreading shit around."

Kabocha rolled upwards to face her, narrowing his odd eyes at her. "It's not a secret to anyone, Paseri."

"I know. But the Prince personally pounded Hakusai into the training room mats because that dumbass didn't realize his fucking _sovereign_ was in the room when he started running his mouth about how the princess kept herself locked up so she wouldn't have to talk to us."

He laughed, and then shook his head. "I don't get it. I mean, I know _why_ Frieza did it, but I don't get why Prince Vegeta pretends to go along with it. He should have picked another Saiyan woman after that whole debacle with Serori. This marriage…it's ridiculous. Fruitless. He should have set her up in her own room and left her to her own devices. He doesn't owe her a damned thing."

Above him, Paseri shrugged and rolled over to watch the clouds shamble along with the breeze. "Psychoanalyze to your heart's content, brother, just be as silent as the grave. Like you said, I ain't covering for stupid."

* * *

><p>Vegeta frowned, wishing he had earplugs to block out the voices that sharply ricocheted around the massive landing bay. Scanning the mob of bodies swarming the deck below his space pod, he estimated that nearly all of his soldiers had made it back from Roqqi already. Better time than he had estimated, which would make Frieza happy—at least in a relative sense.<p>

He stepped out of his pod and made his way down the steps from the space in which the vessel had anchored itself. Every now and then, a muted suction noise signaled the arrival of another pod in the bay—entering one of hundreds of chutes on one side of the hull and arriving on the other side. Vegeta heard Daikon shout something at one of his men, and he glanced up behind him, scanning the honeycomb-like structure until he spotted the second-class warrior jumping out of his pod to take the stairs two at a time down to the landing bay deck.

As he passed by, soldiers pounded their dirty breastplates in salute, and Vegeta nodded back in acknowledgement. The mood all around was high, and he overheard men and women in different units comparing stories and kills. He saw Serori up ahead, and he raised his arm to flag her down.

"Congratulations, Vegeta," she grinned, reaching out for him. As they shook hands, soldiers around them cheered and clapped each other on the shoulders and back in triumph.

"We would be in a very different place if not for your squadron's overnight handiwork," Vegeta replied. Roqq had been completely unprepared for the purge. Given the size and development of the planet's infrastructure, he had expected a much harder fight. But he had let Serori choose the targets for pre-emptive assassination and destabilization, and she had chosen well. King Roqqi, obviously, several members of his political cabinet and the shell military that Frieza had allowed Roqqi to establish (Frieza had taken a hands-off approach with Roqq years ago, but recently decided that micromanagement was in his best interest.), and even certain computer networks. Serori had designed a virus herself—with Zarbon looking over her shoulder at every step—and infected the defense mainframe as soon as she gained access to the super computers inside the government buildings.

Glowing through the soot and blood, Serori nodded at her Prince. "Thanks. I'll pass that along to the squad during the debriefing." She caught someone's eye over Vegeta's shoulder and made her excuses, squeezing his upper arm as passed by him.

"My Prince," Nappa said, sidling closer once Serori had left. "Apparently there was some trouble with the Roqqani on board today."

"If they weren't on the planet they weren't my problem," Vegeta scoffed, turning his scanner off and tucking it between his tail and armor. "Those knuckle draggers aren't going to be able to lay that at my feet."

Nappa squared up with Vegeta and lowered his voice. "Bulma got caught up in it. They ganged up on her on C deck."

"What?" Vegeta snapped, giving Nappa his full attention. "Why am I just now hearing about this?"

Nappa snarled and rolled his eyes. "That fucker Zarbon. One of my women was one of the first few to make it back to the ship, and Zarbon was waiting here. Told her to tell her CO to come find him when he got back. So as soon as I got back here, she told me, and I spent the next fucking half hour running around this hellforsaken ship trying to find his pansy ass. I just now got back here to find you."

Vegeta clenched his jaw. "Is she in medbay?"

"No, she's been in your room since it happened. Nothing serious, if Zarbon is to be believed," Nappa said, and Vegeta's shoulders relaxed.

"They tell us to wear these scouters and then they don't fucking use the goddamned radio on it." Vegeta exhaled heavily and looked around at the ebb and flow of his subjects. "I would take you with me to debrief Kakarott—was he around when this happened or did he miss it all and reaffirm his ineptitude?"

"Not sure, but he's with her now."

"I would take you with me but I guess Radditz with have to do. Bring the mission reports to my room after the others turn theirs in. Double check the casualty count so we don't have any fuck ups like last time."

"Last time?"

"Goddammit, Nappa, _you_ were the one that reported Kabu as dead and then he came back from the Qossacs to find someone else in his bunk."

Nappa flushed. "Well, he didn't come to the debriefing and no one had seen him so I assumed he'd bitten it. Anyway, I will make sure to check the brothels and the mess."

"Good. And all of you," Vegeta called out, pausing as the landing bay fell quiet, "have earned a drink and a fuck tonight!" The Saiyans erupted into chaos again and Vegeta knew that if he wanted to leave, he had to do it now. Getting stuck in the middle of an orgy was not high on his priority list at the moment. He snagged Radditz on the way out, who bitched once for show but immediately fell into step.

The lights had been left on for them, as it were. Though the overhead lights were off to conserve energy, what Serori called the "runway lights" had been illuminated, running along the edges of the hallways on each side. Radditz jabbered on about what a fucking breeze this job had been and how he definitely had enough energy left to go lay into that blonde Qossac, you know, the one with legs for days?

The third-class soldier still had his scanner on, and they both started a bit when it lit up unexpectedly in the dark and beeped just as Frieza crossed before them at an intersection.

"Well done, my little prince," Frieza purred, setting his hands on his hips. Vegeta dipped his head but otherwise remained silent. Radditz had dropped to his knee immediately, his mouth shut for once in his life. "Your soldiers are quite the talk of the town right now. I've sent Dodoria to F deck to make sure that Wema knows they'll be in and out all night. Anyway, I expect you at brunch tomorrow for debriefing. You should bring Bulma along. I know that she'll enjoy the…distraction."

"Yes, my lord," Vegeta replied, willing Frieza to _hurry the fuck up and move_.

Frieza smirked at him and finally turned to leave. "By the way, I'm sure you'd like to know that my soldiers put the Roqqani up against a bulkhead. I'm sure Bulma will rest _much _easier now," he threw over his shoulder with a laugh.

Vegeta waited until the sound of Frieza's tail sliding along the floor and his humming had faded before he moved. He looked down at Radditz, whose shoulders had slumped with a bit of relief. It had only been a few months since Radditz's joke comparing Frieza to a parasitic, bottom-dwelling slug had been overheard by the wrong person. Frieza had returned Radditz in such bad shape that only the length of his hair had identified him. Vegeta ground his molars at the memory of helping Nappa carry him down to medbay.

"Let's go," Vegeta muttered, tapping Radditz's boot with his own. "Let's go see what your brother has to say."

* * *

><p>So, let me know what you think! Thanks for reading!<p> 


	7. Chapter 7

Hey, everyone! I did not think that starting law school was going to affect my writing this much but it has, unfortunately. I started my first year and the workload is really kicking my teeth in. I'm at the tail end of fall break and basically wrote this entire chapter yesterday. It's shorter than usual but it had a good breaking point at the end.

Also, this chapter just reaffirms that this story is chock full of language and sex/allusions to sex. It's definitely NSFW and not for kids, so proceed at your own risk.

* * *

><p>When they entered the dim room, Kakarott jolted upright from his reclined position on the chaise, swinging his legs around off the upholstered furniture.<p>

"Hey, half-wit," Raditz spat, "get the fuck off of the Prince's—"

"Shut up, Raditz," Vegeta interrupted, and Raditz's teeth clicked as he snapped his mouth shut. "Take your brother out and debrief him. Report to Nappa when you're done." He jerked his head at the door, and Bardock's sons saluted him on their way out.

She sat at his desk across the room, engrossed in her work before her. He crossed the room and braced his hands on the low back of the desk chair, sweeping his eyes across the mottled purple and red bruises stretched across her skin from wrist to wrist. As she moved some papers around, his eyes caught the hitch in her right shoulder. He reached out and lightly palpated the joint there.

Bulma hissed through her teeth, her shoulder jerking against his touch. "Just wrenched," she told him, pausing in her sketching. "Vegeta, I need you to do something for me." Her voice was quiet, and he turned his focus to the desk as she spread the papers out for him to see.

She had drawn a series of crude maps with faint numbers and gridlines sketched out over the geographical features. "When Earth is purged, you need to find a boy named Gohan and make sure he is kept safe. He lives here, on Mount Paozu, but he may not still be there. I've drawn maps of all the other places he could be. If he's not there then…he's somewhere safer than this ship."

"What use do I have with a child?"

"He's Goku's son," Bulma said, resting a cheek on her fist and looking up at Vegeta. Her hair was piled messily on top of her head, and as she turned her face towards him, he saw that someone had grabbed at her face and left a set of scratches behind. One would leave a scar when it healed, a relentless reminder of his lack of foresight.

He shook his head and turned away, pulling his dirty armor over his head and dropping it on the floor. "I have no duty to some human brat Kakarott has called his own."

"Human? Gohan's not human." Bulma broke off and sighed, rubbing gingerly at her eyes. "I don't know. I don't know what he is but he was born with a tail and Goku can't deny him—they're like mirror images of each other." She waited patiently for Vegeta to respond and watched as he shrugged out of his jumpsuit and used it to wipe at his face.

"It's not possible," he said at last with finality. "The woman must be a Saiyan as well."

"Nope," Bulma replied as Vegeta sat down on the foot of the bed. "Chi Chi's not to be trifled with but she's as human as me. Gohan's gotta be some sort of half-and-half between the two of them."

He stared at the floor, his forearms pressed to his thighs. If she weren't so exhausted, and if he hadn't just returned from razing a civilization, Bulma would have teased him about how dirty his face and neck were compared to the rest of him. He seemed lost in thought, so Bulma pushed off of the chair and went into bathroom to get a washcloth. When she returned and passed it to him, he finally met her eyes, shaking himself of whatever stupor he had been in. "You can't tell anyone about that," he said. "You can't tell anyone about Kakarott's son."

Bulma laughed and sat down next to Vegeta. "Who would I tell?"

"No one can know," he ordered, scrubbing his face brusquely.

"Why?"

Vegeta hesitated a beat too long and Bulma reached across to grab his wrist. She took the washcloth from his hands, found a clean spot, and urged his chin upwards to wipe away the grime under his jawline. "After today," she murmured, "we need to stop lying to each other."

She didn't offer the cloth back to him, and he closed his eyes against the cool, damp slide of the fibers against his skin. "Breeding across species isn't possible. It's never happened before and Frieza's counting on that," he finally said, coughing at the end at how rough his voice sounded. _Damned smoke_.

"What, us having a litter of kids climbing the walls of the ship isn't in his master plan?" Bulma japed lightly, and all of a sudden Vegeta's stomach lurched and he was overcome with an urgent wanting to press her into the mattress and wrap her legs around his hips and push into her and _fill her up_. "Anyway, that's the difference between being a scientist and an evil overlord dictator: just because it hasn't happened before doesn't mean it's not possible. Maybe we're really compatible."

Vegeta quirked an eyebrow, even with closed eyes. "It's a shame your human body is so weak from today. I'd show you just how _compatible_ we really are."

The cloth stilled against the nape of his neck and she breathed a laugh next to his ear. His eyes nearly jerked open when he felt her other hand drop and trace the crease of his hip through his shorts. "Oh, I remember." Her breath hitched as her fingers brushed against him, half-hard from his strange impulse a moment earlier. "This came up quickly," she mused.

"Bloodlust," he answered darkly, rising from the bed. He snagged the cloth from her hand and made the mistake of glancing into her eyes, wide and shiny from a surge of pheromones. He straddled her crossed legs, fisting her ridiculously messy hair and tilting her head back so he could lean down and kiss her, tongue deep in her mouth, and she met him halfway. Only when he felt her hands grasp the outside of his thighs did he pull back. He eyed her bruises and reminded her: "Your body can't take what I would do tonight." _What, no litter of brats?_ his mind mocked and he forced himself out of the room.

The reminder of Roqq's purge rushed over Bulma and she sighed, dropping back against the blankets. He'd just taken part in the destruction of a planet, and _she'd_ nearly been killed that day, and yet here she was, ready for him to lay her out and do his worst. She didn't even _like_ him, not really. But Yamcha had always been sexiest after a sparring retreat in the desert, and there had even been a hot minute on Roshi's Island when she was younger and Goku had been practicing kamehameha's for hours on the beach—maybe she'd just always liked dirty, sweaty men.

But then her husband came back from brushing his teeth and changing into looser sleeping shorts, all black eyes and wide shoulders and that bizarrely striking widow's peak, climbing onto the bed with the grace of a mountain cat and she realized: no, it was just _Vegeta_. He reached down and gently slid her up the bed with one arm. "I'll tell Kakarott tomorrow to keep his mouth shut about his son," he told her, depositing her with a soft thump against the pillows. "If Frieza finds out…"

"He'd put me out an airlock," Bulma finished, shifting her legs under the duvet.

_If he's hasty_, Vegeta thought, rolling onto his back. _If you're lucky_.

She sighed and picked at the edge of the blankets. "I sent a message to my father today. It was really long, and full of instructions about projects that I had been working on at the time. But…I kind of slipped in a coded message for him to check on Chi Chi and Gohan," she admitted, the words falling out in a rush. "It was before I knew…"

Vegeta exhaled sharply. "It's done—there's nothing we can do now. Just don't do anything stupid about that from now on."

She nodded in agreement, and he was about to ask her how they should avoid the inevitable consequences of the sex they were having when a knock came at the door. Bulma waved him away with one hand and rolled onto her side, and he went to speak with Nappa in the hallway.

By the time they finished discussing the mission reports and the rearrangement of living quarters to make up for the surprisingly few casualties (including moving Kakarott out of solitary confinement because of his actions earlier that day), Bulma had fallen asleep. Vegeta closed the shade over the window and fell in next to her, turning onto his stomach and bunching the pillow beneath his head. His muscles nearly screamed in happiness to be completely relaxed without having to hold up any weight. No amount of hard sparring could compare to the havoc a purge in Oozaru form wreaked on the body.

_Her hands held his face still—firm even at her age. He was young and strong but this old woman's knotted fingers could have kept a hold on his jaw through an earthquake._

* * *

><p>"<em>I see it; it's coming."<em>

_Laughter, tinkling ceramic chimes, and his mother pressing her lips to the hollow temple of the old woman. "Don't let Vegeta hear you; he doesn't need more reasons to plot and scheme."_

_Milky orbs coming close to him; peering unseeing into his soul. "This one, this halfling prince."_

_An auburn goatee framing a featureless face and maps, maps, maps upon maps. "Which mountains? Which mountains?" But the eyes can't see where he's pointing, and then they _really_ can't see and no one will ever know for sure because it was meant to be but it couldn't ever be._

_She laughs—the first one, the old one. "No, I see it; it's coming."_

Vegeta jerked awake with a deep inhale, grasping onto coherence just in time to stop the shout he was about to let out. Bulma shifted against him in her sleep and mumbled nonsense into the crook of his neck where her face was pressed. Vegeta slipped out from underneath her arm and stalked into the bathroom, sliding the door shut behind him and flipping the light on. He splashed his face and chest with cold water, chasing the dream from his head. His stomach roiled, and he froze, staying stock-still until the nausea passed.

He hadn't had that dream in years.

* * *

><p>Breakfast with Frieza was an awkward affair. At any other meal, on any other planet, with any other host, she would have said that they were being kind to offer her foods from her home, but she knew that it was more likely that Frieza was taunting her. She had half-way thought about wearing a turtleneck and pants, but had decided instead that everyone already knew what had happened so why pretend it hadn't? Vegeta had seemed a bit rattled that morning, and he roundaboutly explained that he had thought the bruising would have faded more by the morning. "I'm a human," she had said, "and we take a while to heal." She planned on covering up when they turned green and yellow, though—that would definitely clash with her hair.<p>

Some of the other Saiyans had come to the breakfast as well—Serori, Nappa, Daikon, and a woman named Paseri who kept eyeing Bulma like she was a piece of abstract modern art that she had to figure out. Bulma had pieced together that they were the highest-ranking soldiers under Vegeta, and the majority of the meal was spent discussing the purge the night before. There were only a few moments where she wanted to throw up from what was being described, but she got through it, and that's what mattered. The worst of it was when Frieza asked how she was enjoying her life as a princess, and Bulma had replied that she was enjoying playing in the lab more than anything else.

Vegeta left straight after, instructing Parseri to meet up with him after dropping Bulma at the laboratory.

"Boy, he must really be worried about you if he chose me," Parseri quipped to Bulma.

"Why should he be, when all the Roqqani are dead now?" Bulma asked, just as drily.

"If you think the Roqqani are the only ones that would be fucking elated to have your head on a platter, you really do need a guard," Parseri informed her. Bulma shrugged next to her and fell silent.

"Vegeta and Serori are close, aren't they?" Bulma asked out of the blue, her voice guarded. Parseri looked up the hall where two in question walked side by side, even their strides in tandem. Serori, a good six inches taller than her prince, bent down to whisper something in his ear, hand brushing his elbow.

Parseri laughed. "Believe me, you do not need to worry about that."

Bulma rolled her eyes. "It never fails to amaze me how well Saiyans have mastered evasive answers."

"Well, I dunno what you want me to say, _Your Grace_. They grew up together, but since the Prince put the betrothal aside they're just the best fuckin' friends to walk the face of the universe." Bulma stopped short and Parseri laughed mirthlessly. "You didn't know about that? I figured you'd have ferretted out all of his secrets by now."

Bulma frowned at her, blue eyes flashing. "No, I guess I haven't gotten my claws that deep into him yet," she returned coolly. "Although I'm satisfied to see that the rumors that I have him wrapped around my finger are as widespread as I've heard."

"Touché," Parseri drawled, turning to a door and typing in a code. "Although given your performance this morning, you aren't quite as _riveting_ at table conversation as I've been led to believe." The door to a small, dark meditation room slid open and Parseri gestured for Bulma to enter. "These fucking useless rooms…" she muttered, fumbling in the dark for the light switch. "Finally. Anyway, _so_ sorry if the gossip mill has gotten to you."

Bulma didn't even rankle at Parseri's mocking tone. "I've dealt with tabloids discussing my personal life since I was fifteen years old. Life gets so much easier once you stop caring. It'll all die down eventually; Vegeta isn't nearly as enamored with me as you'd all like to believe."

"Whatever helps you sleep at night," Parseri replied archly.

"You didn't have to pull me in here; you could have just given me the short version in the hall," Bulma said, changing the subject.

"Nah, neither Serori nor the Prince like to talk about it so it's better to do in private. Better for you to tell him you heard it from me than some eavesdropping asshole trying to brownnose and getting my fucking teeth knocked in later." Parseri leaned back against the wall and crossed her arms over her chest, a move so quintessentially Saiyan Bulma wondered if they'd trademarked it.

"They were betrothed when they were really young. The Prince was maybe four or five and Serori was a baby. You know she's Nappa's niece, right? The queen's aunt was an oracle and used to have all of these visions. She had this vision…what the fuck was it, again?" Parseri paused, looking up at the ceiling, then snapped her fingers. "Oh, yeah. She said that a halfling prince and a mountain princess would rebuild the Saiyan race.

"But she had this vision before Frieza even annexed Planet Vegeta and long before the Prince was born so people cast it off as a flop vision until the invasion. Scores and scores of Saiyans were fucking slaughtered under service to Frieza those first few years, and then the Prince was born. He's always been small, you know? The queen got really sick when she was pregnant with him, and he was born so early no one thought that he would live more than a few days, and he's never really grown out of it. So the King became convinced that the Prince was the halfling prince from the prophecy and set out to find the mountain princess. Nappa's a first-class because his family is distantly related to the royal family, and they were in charge of governing this fucking awful place—full of volcanoes and gorges and shit, but they'd always only had sons. Generations of sons and no daughters. So when Serori was born, the king thought that the prophecy was as good as fucking gold and arranged for the two of them to be married when the time was right.

"Long story short, Frieza check-mated the King into giving up the Prince, but Serori stayed behind for a few years until she got too fucking good at her training and Frieza decided to bring her on as well. Then Planet Vegeta was destroyed. Once that happened, we all thought that, I don't know, they were going to team up and suffocate Frieza in his sleep, or repopulate the Saiyan race on their own, or some shit. I think Frieza just thought that it was fucking hilarious that we all had hedged our bets on a set of half-grown brats. But, nothing ever happened and it's all faded out now. Another pipe dream for a dead race," Parseri finished sardonically, scuffing at the ground with her boot.

Bulma looked shell-shocked by all of this information but still managed to pull herself together enough to ask: "But, what happened to the marriage? Frieza put a stop to it?"

"Oh, fuck, that's the best part! Nah, Frieza didn't really give a shit about that; he doesn't put much stock in prophecies or oracles. He's gotten all into psychological warfare lately; back then he liked to beat the shit out of people when he was pissed off, not fuck with their head. I don't think the Prince cared either way, but Serori's a lesbian and threatened to kill herself rather than fuck or marry a man. So, the Prince let her out and we all figured that it _was_ a flop vision, just like we had all thought back in the day. And look at where we are now," Parseri said, pointedly looking Bulma up and down.

"Unbelievable." Bulma tipped her head back and traced the lines in the ceiling with her eyes. "I can't believe I didn't see that about Serori."

"Eh, you were being a jealous bitch," Parseri offered with a shrug. "She's pretty sneaky with her women and she gets familiar as fuck with the Prince. Drives Nappa up the wall when she doesn't use his title but you can't get much closer to someone than a fifteen-year engagement. Anyway, as fuckin' dandy a time as I'm having right now, I got shit to do. Any other soul-searching conversations you need to have right now?"

Bulma shook her head and smoothed down her blazer. "No, I think I'm full up for the day."

When Parseri and Bulma reached the doors of the lab, and Bulma thanked her for her time, Parseri hesitated before warning: "Just let sleeping dogs lie, alright? Or at least keep my name outta it. I have enough trouble with my brother running his mouth to the four corners of the fuckin' universe, I don't need to watch yours, too."

"I'll keep it in mind," Bulma promised, and Parseri turned on her heel and joined the ebb and flow of the traffic in the hallway without so much as a goodbye. Orja greeted Bulma with her typical enthusiasm, and Bulma sat down and began her work for the day.

Bulma seemed to lose track of time after that. There was always so much work to be done in the lab, so many projects to complete that she began keeping time in milestones, not days. What was the point of a calendar on a ship, anyway, when you didn't have seasons? The lab figured out pretty quickly that she wasn't as well-suited for patient interaction they had hoped (even though she'd protested the same the whole way through) and stuck her in analysis. She spent her days in front of centrifuges and burners and eventually the homesickness for her toolkit and drafting table faded to a memory seen through a filter of time and exhaustion.

The days ended, as always, with an escort back to her rooms. If she was lucky, Vegeta would spare Goku from their intense, never-ending battle to beat each other through the hull of the ship. Otherwise, it was one of Vegeta's captains, and never one of the lower-ranking soldiers. They were nice enough, but generally disinterested in Bulma beyond their fidelity to Vegeta. Bulma had realized since hers and Vegeta's conversation about Gohan that her fatal flaw was that she was not a Saiyan, and there was nothing that she could do about that. The only way to curry favor with her adopted people was to reveal the one secret that would definitely get her killed, so she kept her head low and said nothing that would make her life difficult. Even Frieza and Zarbon lost interest when the market for planets dipped unexpectedly and they became sidetracked by economics, of all things.

Vegeta, though, never lost interest. The first night that she didn't flinch in pain when he touched her was the night that he put her on all fours and stroked into her so hard she thought the bed was going to go right through the wall and into the next room. She'd explained her birth control to him, and it was like all bets were off. Their attraction to each other never seemed to fade: she could have worked for ten hours straight and have been dead on her feet, and he could have been sparring with Goku, Serori, and Parseri all day long, and they _still_ would fall into each other like they'd just woken up from the best sleep of their lives. Even riding the crimson tide didn't bother him, and that's when she thought she'd found her dream guy at last, dragon balls be damned.

And then a party from Earth threw Gohan at Frieza's feet and everything changed.

* * *

><p>Again, sorry about the wait time if you're like me and get frustrated when stories don't update quickly enough. I always WANT to write, but like I said, the workload during 1L is just as horrible as all of the rumors make it out to be. I hope that this chapter answered some questions that have been popping up in the reviews. As always, let me know what you think!<p> 


	8. Chapter 8

This chapter starts off pretty brutal and has a pretty frank discussion of extreme methods of sexual sterilization. Giving people a heads up so that every one is prepared for depictions of and references to violence.

* * *

><p>Bulma blinked slowly against the bight overhead light, grateful for the cold floor under her cheek. A white-hot pain throbbed sharply along her ribcage, ending abruptly right above her legs, and something around her sternum crackled each time she took a breath.<p>

She had blacked out, she thought. Maybe greyed-out. She swept her eyes across the floor, purposefully not lingering on her broken hand, trying to follow Frieza's voice to his position. With a deep breath, she gingerly craned her head back and spotted him pacing the bottom step of his dais in front of a kneeling Orja.

"How dare you," Frieza hissed, "how dare you shirk your duties and fail to follow protocol?"

"I am so sorry, my Lord," Orja pleaded. "I had no reason to suspect—" A sharp backhand cut Orja off, and she shrieked as Frieza grasped a handful of her hair and tossed her across the room.

"If you were half-way competent," he shouted as she hit the ground and rolled away, "there wouldn't be any need for apologies!" Orja made a high-pitched keening noise and curled in on herself.

Bulma coughed, splattering blood across the floor, and her heart sank at the sight of it. The noise called Frieza's attention back to her, and she watched, unmoving, as he stepped off of his dais and advanced towards her. "Bulma, Bulma, Bulma," he tsked, spreading his arms wide, "I have given you a home, and work, and an attentive husband, and you repay me by keeping secrets?"

"I didn't realize it was a secret," Bulma shakily lied, her voice hoarse from earlier and the blood now coating her throat. Frieza stopped by her shoulder, his tail swishing furiously behind him. "I didn't know."

"Do you realize what a _problem_ this is?" Frieza hissed. "That a backwater planet in some godforsaken swamp of the galaxy could fuck everything up?"

Bulma started to cry again, tears running down her cheeks as Frieza knelt down to grasp her face in his hand. "I want you to answer one thing for me," he grit out. "Given how much the monkey prince fucks you, how come you haven't gotten pregnant yet? I've read your file—you ovulate monthly. Disgusting, really. No wonder you humans crawl all over each other. Maybe," he mused, bringing his tail around to wrap around her neck, "I should just treat you like another one of the breeders and rip your insides apart, too."

"It doesn't matter," Bulma croaked, "I can't have children."

"You're lying," Frieza sneered, jerking her face up to his.

"It's the truth, I swear," Bulma sobbed. "I've never been able to carry a baby past a few months. My body…it spits them out."

"Oh, you poor child. What a _shame_," Frieza mocked, standing up and dragging her along with him, "worthless as a fighter and worthless as a breeder. I guess Zarbon made the right choice to stick you down there in the bowels of the lab."

The door at the other end of the receiving room slid open, and Bulma saw Vegeta and Nappa enter from the corner of her eye. Vegeta's gaze settled on her, wrapped in Frieza's tail and awkwardly slumped on the dais, and his face shuttered immediately.

Zarbon followed them in and sighed heavily. "My Lord, you have to be careful with that one."

Frieza laughed. "I meant to just move her out of the way and her ribs just went snap crackle pop! I've been trying to be gentler since then."

"Trying?" Zarbon asked archly, looking dispassionately at Bulma's broken body.

Frieza smirked and waved his hand in a flippant gesture. "My impulse control is somewhat lacking today, my dear Zarbon. I see you found the little Prince?"

Zarbon looked over his shoulder at Vegeta and Nappa as though he just remembered they were there. "Oh. Yes. They were in the lab, talking to that half-breed. Trying at least. It won't stop _wailing_. It could be cute if it tried but it lets its snot and fluids just run all over its face. I'll need a deep-cleanse after simply being in the same room."

Vegeta rolled his eyes and casually shifted his weight to one foot. "Was there a reason you summoned us here like dogs?" he asked in a bored tone. "I have more productive things to do than listen to you and your boy toy banter."

If she could have taken a deep enough breath, she would have screamed at him to shut up, but all she could do was watch as Vegeta blatantly refused to stay at attention in front of Frieza.

"I 'summoned' you here to ask you why you have allowed your supervision of your men to fall into such a state of disrepair that you did not even know that one of them had a son," Frieza sneered, relaxing his grip on Bulma.

"I'm their prince and commander, not their family counselor," Vegeta replied, crossing his arms over his chest. Nappa watched his prince from the corner of his eye, and then shifted his gaze to Bulma.

"Do you realize what a security threat your negligent oversight has—"

"A security threat?" Vegeta scoffed, cutting Frieza off. "A toddling brat of a half-wit third-class is hardly a security threat."

Bulma watched Frieza clench his fists, and she caught Vegeta's eye, silently urging him to stop antagonizing Frieza while he was so worked up. He held her gaze for a half-beat longer before turning his attention back to Frieza, deliberately raising his brow.

Next thing she knew, she was flying across the room, landing in front of Vegeta and Nappa's feet with a jarring thud. Her body shrieked in protest, but all she could get out was a low groan as the final momentum rolled her onto her back.

"Nappa," Frieza called, his voice deceptively even, "take our dear Bulma here to the lab and put her into a regeneration tank. _Do_ be careful with her; I believe I may have severed her spine. You can come back for your Prince later."

Nappa bent down and gently—much more gently than Bulma would have expected—scooped her off the floor. Her head fell back limply, and she caught a final glimpse of Vegeta before Nappa turned to leave the room. He was facing straight ahead, brows drawn down tightly, and jaw clenched—he was ready.

When Nappa carried her outside and the door closed behind them, they heard the first thud of Vegeta's body hitting the floor, and Bulma drew a shaky breath. "Why did he—" she started to wail, and Nappa shushed her.

"Don't you cry now," he stated, his voice harsh. "He did this for you, so don't you shame him by crying about it."

Swallowing thickly, Bulma turned to press her face into Nappa's shoulder, too far gone to feel embarrassed. She must have blacked out again, and the next thing she knew, she was wet. She jerked and shrieked against the pain in her side. Nappa shushed her again as he eased her naked body into the shallow pool of regeneration fluid. "You're just gonna rest a spell, girl," he told her, laying her body down on her good side, "and wake up good as new."

"Take care of him," Bulma said, her tongue heavy in her mouth and vision going gray. Nappa's fuzzy figure paused in sliding something black and rubbery over her head.

"You aren't going to die," he seemed to remind her.

She couldn't say anything else because he was fastening the mask to her face and the gas in it smelled like—

* * *

><p>And then the world was green.<p>

She was floating.

wet.

warm.

like she had slipped underneath the surface of her heated pool. She inhaled before she could stop herself and, panicking—

drowning—

she thrashed in an instinctive drive towards the surface and air. But she swallowed air, not water, and as she gasped, her face strained against a rubber seal—a mask.

A dull tapping and the muted sound of a voice drew her attention to a point in front of her. Vegeta stood on the other side, his hand still loosely fisted from where he had rapped against the glass of the tank. His mouth moved and sound dimly followed several times until she pieced together: Can you feel your legs?

Still dazed and fuzzy, her perception _there_ but not _hers_, Bulma looked down at her legs and feet hanging below her, swaying in the liquid, her big toes grazing the ground.

She saw them touch, way down far below her, seven leagues under the sea, and that meant that there should be something else something extra something _more_ than seeing two things one hers one not hers brush against each other…

think think think focus focus and _yes_

a strange friction. A touch of her body against something else and she didn't just see it she _felt_ it and it was so odd to her that she jerked her leg up and flexed her foot.

Now she felt other things that were more than just odd. They burned and ached and flashed white hot across her field of vision and somebody screamed she could hear it in her head.

"Sleep now," Vegeta's mouth told her. He looked down to focus on buttons and levers and she reached out to touch those worry lines to smooth them away for once—

* * *

><p>"That was a lucky break," Serori muttered from behind him. After a moment: "no pun intended."<p>

"I _will_ kill you," he replied, his face turned up to Bulma's as her eyes slid closed. She really was a beautiful woman, Serori had to admit. She was so little in the regen tank—Nappa had chosen his preferred tank to put Bulma in, extra-large or not, and Serori knew that Vegeta appreciated that—so she floated in the middle, arms and legs and hair fanning out through the liquid.

"Seriously, though. Do you know how many times I've been in these tanks since the Wessiye purge? Seven. And I _still_ can't feel these fingers," she said, holding up her left ring and pinky fingers.

"Do you want me to cut them off for you once and for all?" Vegeta asked, flashing his canines at Serori.

She scoffed and flipped her hair behind her shoulder. "I don't think so. I wouldn't attract anyone with a mangled hand."

"Go ask Aerie how he does it, then. He must know the secrets." Vegeta turned back to the tank, watching Bulma drift in the water. Her ribs had been stitching themselves back together for a few hours now, and her fingers were all straight and pointing the right direction again, but bruises and swelling remained. Two, maybe three more hours, Serori supposed, given her rate of healing up to this point.

She healed uncommonly slow compared to most races—on par with the Roqqani, really, back when they were still, you know, a viable race. Vegeta's shattered body had healed within a few hours, and after a nice meal he was right as rain, but Bulma had been in the tank for ten hours and counting. At least they didn't try to start her on bed rest—she probably _would_ have died that way. Eventually.

"Vegeta," Serori started, walking up behind him and leaning against Bulma's tank. "The half-breed…is that why you had us—"

Vegeta cut his eyes over to her and Serori shut her mouth instantly. "Nothing about _that_ has changed."

"Understood."

"Good."

After a moment, Serori snuck a glance at Vegeta's face; he was staring at Bulma with such an intense longing that Serori's heart clenched in her chest for this boy that she had grown up with and protected with her life since she put on her first black jumpsuit. "I'm sorry," she said, "about Bulma."

He shook his head. "She's stronger than you think."

"No, Vegeta," Serori repeated quietly. "I'm sorry about Bulma. Maybe the regen tank…maybe it will fix whatever is wrong with that, too."

He was silent for a long while. "The tank won't fix what isn't broken," he finally muttured, repeating the lab tech's mantra like rote memorization.

Serori nodded. "Okay," she murmured, and squeezed his shoulder. "I'll be in the training room if you need me."

"Take Kakarott with you," he replied. "Daikon can help you kick his teeth in if you need help."

Serori paused, half-way through her pivot away from him. "Are we ever going to talk about that, Vegeta?"

"We've gone this long without talking about it."

"He's going to draw the wrong kind of attention at some point."

Vegeta rubbed at his eyes, wanting to just lie down and sleep for days. "Wearing him out keeps his reaction times just slow enough. That's going to have to do for now."

"Vegeta," Serori groaned, "keeping _him_ tired keeps _us_ tired. It takes three of us to even approach power parity and it's not like _you_ have the time to spar with him for hours at a time. No, no," she pointed at him, "don't even think about it. What do you think it's going to look like if you have a preferred sparring partner, and a third-class class at that? He's going to become _Frieza's_ preferred sparring partner and then all of this keeping-it-quiet will be for naught."

Frowning, he crossed his arms over his chest. "Just…do this for today and put another rotation in for tomorrow. Nothing lower than second class. What are the specs on the brat?"

Serori sighed heavily next to him. "Weak. Looks like Kakarott was the only lucky one in the family."

"Or the human genes dilute the strength," Vegeta mused. Serori shrugged and left, saying that if he needed her, he knew where to find her. He remained in front of Bulma's regeneration tank for a while longer, letting his mind settle down into a blankly meditative state by watching the discoloration of her skin slowly, slowly, slowly fade away.

Later, he found himself in front of the window of the half-breed's observation room, watching as the boy tossed and turned in his sleep. He looked Saiyan enough—with the spikey hair and the tail, but, gods above, the brat could cry. When he and Nappa had been interrogating him earlier, all he talked about was wanting his mother, his father, his grandmother…he'd even called out for "Aunt Bulma" once Nappa moronically let her name drop in a quiet side conversation. Strength aside, his senses certainly seemed stronger than Bulma's.

The boy's work-up rested in a folder by the door, and Vegeta picked it up and flipped through the pages. Apparent stunted growth compared to an average Saiyan child his age; power levels far below the average power level for a third-class Saiyan of his age; meek and timid personality…Vegeta snarled and snapped the folder shut. What he'd _needed_ was another Kakarott, but without the ineptitude. What he'd gotten was a weak, useless child whom he was now obliged to protect.

The men that had brought the brat in swore on their knees in front of Frieza that the boy had kept them at bay while his mother disappeared into the forest. Frieza took one look at the sniveling mess that they had kept in energy-suppressing shackles and took their heads himself for weakness and fraud.

The boy rolled over and opened his eyes. They were free of tears, and he met Vegeta's gaze evenly through the glass. Vegeta stared back, glowering at the child.

"What," he barked, knowing his voice would carry through the window. "You going to ask for your mother again?"

"No," the boy answered, frowning back at Vegeta. "I'm hungry."

* * *

><p>This time, when Bulma woke up, she was shivering and wet. Someone wrapped a towel around her and tugged her upwards and onto her feet. She wiped at her face and Parseri said, "C'mon, Princess, let's get you into the shower. That shit's a bitch to get outta your hair."<p>

"Vegeta?" Bulma managed to get out through her chattering teeth, "Vegeta…"

Parseri scoffed. "The Prince is fine. He was done a few hours ago. _You're_ the one they were about to charge rent to." Parseri walked her into a shower stall and turned on the water. "Scrub up, and be quick about it, alright?"

Bulma lingered under the spray longer than necessary, even as Parseri banged on the door and shouted for her to hurry up. Her hands felt strange as she scrubbed the green residue from underneath her nails. They didn't hurt, but she knew they _should_, and her mind seemed to create some sort of phantom ache as though it was telling her to remember what had happened.

She remembered Vegeta, vaguely, looking up at her with dark eyes in a strange green world, but the memories were fleeting and fractured, like a dream she couldn't piece together. He'd asked about her legs, right? She peered down at her feet, spreading her toes wide and pressing squarely into the tiles of the shower. Why did that feel like an accomplishment again?

_Frieza._

And then Bulma remembered the feel of his tail against her back, and how she'd had to wriggle away from him on her forearms because she couldn't seem to get her knees to move up underneath her hips like they should have.

She dimly took the towel from Parseri, rubbing herself down in front of her husband's soldier and scrubbing her head without shame. Parseri held open a thick robe and Bulma awkwardly twisted her arms around to slide into it.

As she thought hard about how to move her body, she made an impatient sound. Strangely enough, Parseri hummed in her throat and moved the cloth slightly to help Bulma shift into the robe. "I'd forgotten how fuckin' weird this is the first time 'round." She moved to Bulma's front and wrapped the flaps closed and tied the knot for her. "Your brain's gotta make sense outta it all and sometimes it takes a bit for it to figure out what the fuck's going on again. Here," she grabbed a pair of slippers and bent down in front of Bulma. "Hold onto the wall there—there you go." She lifted Bulma's feet by the ankle and guided them into the slippers. "Last thing I need is for you to fall on your ass," she muttered underneath her breath.

Bulma laughed softly, closing her eyes for a moment so the world would stop tilting so oddly. "You would've caught me anyways. That's why you're a captain, right? Because you're fast and strong?"

Shrugging, Parseri opened the door to the hallway. "I guess. On a basic level."

Nodding, Bulma followed her out into the hallway. "And because I'm growing on you. Otherwise you would've told me to sit down and figure it out on my own."

"Let's not jump the damn gun, now."

Parseri knew the code to her and Vegeta's door, and reached through to punch the "door close" button once Bulma was across the threshold. Bulma would have turned around and said goodbye, but figured she knew Parseri well enough to know that it wouldn't necessarily put her in the captain's good graces. Parseri was more of an actions type of woman—Bulma would earn her loyalty when she'd done something more important than a goodnight wave. Until then, attempts to ingratiate herself would simply roll off the other woman's back like water.

The bedroom was dark, but the lights were still on in the bathroom. Bulma crossed to the doorway—walking and moving was much, much easier now—and raised her hand in a half-wave. "I thought you would be asleep by now," she said.

Vegeta was laid back in the deep soaking tub, arms up on the sides and his head rolled towards the door. "I'm not tired," he replied. "I've been waiting for you to get back."

He spoke quite seriously, and he held her gaze without waver, and Bulma swallowed. "How sweet of you," she teased with a slight smile.

"Please," Vegeta snorted. "I was only going to make sure that you didn't trip over the rug or something mundane because you were still recovering from the regeneration tank. It would have been absolutely ridiculous to have to tank you twice in one day."

"Is that an ice bath?"

"It was." He didn't speak further, so Bulma leaned over the edge and trailed her fingers through the water. It was hot, now.

"What happened? I thought that this was 'only for ice baths.'" Bulma asked with a mocking tone.

"I used my energy to heat it up," he explained, a queer, tight tone to his voice.

Bulma searched his face, trying to find a clue of his apparent discomfort, but he had closed his eyes to her and turned his face back up to the ceiling. Suddenly, she narrowed her eyes and sat down on the edge of the tub. "You _like_ it," she teased him. "You…wanted to see what I liked so much and now _you_ like it."

Vegeta didn't answer (too proud, she knew) but his silence was enough. She stood up and disrobed, slipping down into the water at the opposite end of the tub. He watched her, a tad confused, surely because he'd never partaken in a bath like this, and shifted his ankles to accommodate her. "I thought you would be tired," he mentioned.

"I don't want to go to sleep yet," she told him, avoiding his eyes, wiggling downwards until her head rested back against the edge of the tub. They sat in silence for a few moments. Bulma traced the ceiling with her eyes for a while and eventually asked: "How are you…feeling?"

"I feel fine. Good as new," he stated definitively. "Are you still feeling foggy?"

"No. That's all gone now. Parseri was actually…nice. I couldn't have dressed myself without her." She hesitated, and Vegeta felt that, and waited. Finally: "I feel like I should be hurting. I felt that in the shower. I can feel my legs but I feel like I shouldn't. I look at my hands and think that they should be broken. Is that normal?"

"Yes. It goes away soon. The best thing to do is to not think about it." She felt the water move and his palm come to rest against her calf underneath the water. "Any of it."

Bulma nodded, understanding (_remembering_), but wanted to tell him: "I was worried about you. You didn't have to get involved…I knew he wasn't going to kill me. He wants me alive so—"

Vegeta shook his head, cutting her off. "My body can take much more than yours. You needed to get to a tank. Like I said, the best thing to do is not think about it." He dropped his eyes to the water and swirled his hand, absently making a whirlpool.

"He said something to me, before you got there," she started, quietly. "About 'breeders' and if he should…tear me up inside, too." Vegeta clenched his jaw and glowered at the surface of the water. "Is that why I haven't seen any young Saiyans, Vegeta? Because the women can't get pregnant?"

Vegeta didn't say anything for a while, just moved his hand through the water—back and forth, back and forth. "You remember why Planet Vegeta was destroyed?"

"Because of Bardock," she answered. "He led a revolt against Frieza."

"I only told you half the story. The other half is that Frieza was worried that we would grow too powerful and would be able to defeat him. We have a legend of…a transcended state of power. It's when a warrior is able to break beyond his normal energy constraints and channels an immense amount of power. More powerful than any normal Saiyan. Frieza learned of this one way or another. When Bardock rose up against him, he could have just put down the mutiny. But he went beyond that and destroyed the planet, leaving only enough soldiers to serve him and not nearly enough to launch a full attack."

"And…he wanted to control the numbers," Bulma concluded, drawing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. "Permanently. I'm guessing he's had their uteruses removed."

Vegeta nodded once, and then suddenly raised his eyes up to hers. "The boy," he started to say, and then stopped. "I had…thought that maybe—but there wasn't anything. Kakarott's strong and the boy is weak. And you—you can't—" He was stumbling over his words and Bulma felt like a hand had wrapped around her heart and squeezed tightly because all of a sudden she saw that Vegeta had been _hoping_ for something more than a plateaued existence and it had been snatched from him—from his people—and she _knew_ that he was hearing death knells ringing in his ears.

She moved onto her knees and leaned over him, pressing her mouth to his. His arms wrapped around her back, pulling her down to him, and she pressed kisses to his cheeks and the corners of his eyes. "I'm sorry," she whispered into his ear. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He inhaled deeply and pressed his face into the crook of her neck.

With a deep sigh, he seemed to regain control of his emotions (the silent wetness she felt slide past her collarbone in that brief moment was a secret that she would never breathe to another soul—not to him, not to Goku, not anyone) and leaned back against the edge of the tub once more.

"A transcendent power, huh?" She asked, sliding down in the tub and resting her cheek on his shoulder. "You haven't heard of the World Martial Arts Tournament, yet, have you? On Earth. Every few years, a bunch of fighters get together and battle it out to determine who is the World Champion among them. You would probably like it."

Vegeta grunted. "Hardly a challenge."

"You say that now. Goku competes regularly and sometimes he has good opponents. He's even been beaten."

"Hm. Continue."

"See—_now_ you're interested. Anyway, Goku _was_ just a kid and he lost kind of on a technicality. Still. It was a good fight. It was the 22nd World Tournament and Goku and Krillin and Yamcha entered—they all studied under Master Roshi, who lives on this tiny island out in the middle of the ocean. This other guy, Master Shen, doesn't like Roshi and brought his own students to enter and fight against Roshi's students…"

* * *

><p><em>They grab at her.<em>

_Little hands, pulling, tugging, squeezing, always clamoring for more more more-_

_She chases them—reaching out to snatch them back, to keep them close._

_Bright eyes, new eyes, peering up at her._

_Blazing with the light of god._

* * *

><p>Serori woke up suddenly, with Weila leaning over her. "Serori," Weila cried out in alarm, reaching out and brushing at Serori's face, "what's the matter?"<p>

She was crying—sobbing, really, with tears streaming down her cheeks and into her hair. "My children," she cried out. "They were beautiful." She rolled onto her back and pressed the back of her hands against her eyes.

Weila pressed her lips to Serori's forearm and rubbed circles on her stomach. "It was just a dream, 'Rori," she murmured.

"I'm so ha-happy," Serori wept, her breath stuttering in her chest as she tried to talk around her sobs. "My ba-babies."

Weila swept her blonde hair back over her shoulder and smoothed her hand across Serori's head, pulling strands of hair from the tears still running down Serori's face and into the pillows. "Darling," she whispered, "it's alright. You were dreaming."

"No—it's real," Serori insisted, framing Weila's face with her hands and staring up at her with wide, unfocused eyes. "It's the truth."

Weila quirked a bit of a half-smile for Serori and ran her fingers under her eyes, wiping away the moisture there. "Okay, then, darling. I believe you. But it's still nighttime and you need to sleep," she cajoled in a soft voice. Serori's eyes slid closed almost on command and Weila hummed in content.

"My children," Serori sighed, and Weila pressed the back of her own hand to Serori's cheeks. The heat seemed to be fading, otherwise she would have somehow dragged the woman to the med bay. Perhaps just a fever dream—yes, it had to have just been a fever dream, Weila concluded as she dropped her own head onto the pillow beside Serori's.

Serori could never have children.

* * *

><p>For those of you that have seen Battlestar Galactica, you may have noticed the little Easter Egg in Serori's dream. A CHRISTMAS GIFT FROM ME TO YOU. [and if you haven't, omg, look at your life, look at your choices. It streams on Netflix. get on it and get your mind blown.]<p>

Obligatory apology for the delay in posting; obligatory "I'm in law school and slowly going insane" explanation.

I appreciate all of your reviews! This was a rough chapter to write, as you can probably see, and I just hope it translated okay from what is going on in my brain.


	9. Chapter 9

For those of you who are American (like me): Happy Memorial Day. If you or someone in your family has served in the armed forces, thank you for you or your family's service.

So. I had really thought that I would have gotten this out before now but, you know, life happens. I had also thought that all that I wanted to get done for the next chunk would take place in this chapter but, you know, plot (and teh pr0nz) happens. I went ahead and made the executive decision to cut the chapter in two, but the second part hasn't been written yet. (sorrysorrysorrysorry!)

Enjoy!

* * *

><p><em>The wind blew gently through the branches, rustling the leaves above ChiChi and Gohan. Her son turned over onto his back and stared up into the trees. "When is Daddy coming home?" he asked.<em>

"_I don't know," ChiChi replied. _

"_I miss him," Gohan told her, openly and sweetly, and ChiChi leaned over and pressed a kiss to his forehead._

"_I do, too."_

_Gohan ran his fingers through the grass, gripping it in his fists from time to time. "When can we go home?"_

_ChiChi's heart clenched at the thought of Mount Paozu, and she closed her eyes and saw their little cottage, with its wide outdoor tub and sun-drenched yard and crisp sheets snapping in the wind. "I don't know," she finally said, her voice thick. "We just need to stay with Mr. Yamucha and Mr. Tien for a while." _

_Gohan frowned at that, a petulant child's frown, and ChiChi wished he were older, and wiser, so that she could talk to him like a man, confide in him her fears, and make plans with him, instead of _for_ him. But he was still a child, barely out of his toddler years, and ChiChi had to be strong for him, for now. So she wiped the tears from her eyes before they could fall and kept on harvesting the wild berries from the bush in front of her. Yamucha was fishing a bit away, because berries wouldn't fill up Gohan, not even for a snack—_

_A piercing whistle sounded to her right, and she whirled, taking in Gohan's little hands up at his mouth, a blade of grass stretched between his thumbs. "Gohan!" she called, "No noise! I've told you—no noise!"_

_Gohan colored, remembering when his mom had squatted down in front of him and told him how very, very important it was to be quiet, and let the blade of grass fall back to the earth. "I'm sorry, Mom."_

_As soon as the words fell from his lips, he heard a rustling from a bit away, and he shot upright. ChiChi heard it a moment later, and she reached out her hand. _Gohan_, she mouthed, and he took her hand. She began leading him gingerly away, but as they approached the pathway, a large figure stepped out in front of them. ChiChi's tightened her grip on Gohan's hand. "Oh! Hello," she called out, adding a wave. Gohan could feel her palm start to sweat and he heard the beat of her heart kick up._

"_What's a pretty thing like you doing up here in the mountains?" the large man asked, leering at ChiChi._

_ChiChi forced a chuckle. "I was born in the mountains; it's where I feel at home." _

"_Why don't you send the boy a bit away and show me a mountain girl welcome, then? Hey, Yaro! I found a pretty lady and her whelp! They must have made that noise." Another man circled around from behind, and ChiChi tried to swallow down the thick fear rising in her throat._

"_You're scaring my mom," Gohan told him, pulling a fierce frown. "Please be nice to her—" The man who was not Yaro reached forward and slapped Gohan aside, and ChiChi screamed out her son's name, caught off-guard when not-Yaro caught onto the front of her dress and ripped it open. She whipped her fist out and landed a solid punch in not-Yaro's eye, and he yelped, stepping back. Yaro jumped in and swiped at her, but she ducked and swept her foot out, catching Yaro in the kneecap._

"_Son of a bitch!" Yaro yelped, but he quickly recovered and grabbed at ChiChi's dress again. Not-Yaro, shaking his head, bared his teeth and moved in as well, only to be knocked backward by a fearsome headbutt to the stomach from Gohan._

"_LEAVE HER ALONE!" he screamed, jumping upwards and pounding his little fists into not-Yaro's head. Yaro, who had had his hands full wrestling ChiChi to the ground and trying to tug down the front of his jumpsuit at the same time while ChiChi twisted and turned, finally rose up to help his friend, only to face the surprising force of Gohan's fists and feet._

"_Gohan," ChiChi called out, clambering slowly to her feet, shaking hands trying to hold her clothes together and failing. Gohan spared her no mind, and ChiChi felt the oddest pushing sensation, as if she were facing the wind head on. When not-Yaro tried to catch Gohan from behind, her son easily spun to meet him, and that's when ChiChi saw that Gohan's eyes were completely white, his lips were pulled back to bare his teeth. _

_She choked out a cry and scrambled backwards. _Yamucha, Yamucha, Yamucha_, her mind babbled at her, and she turned around and ran towards the lake that she knew Yamucha was planning on fishing in. _I need Yamucha, I need him to help Gohan, Yamucha Yamucha, help me, help me. _The sounds of Gohan's screaming faded behind her as her feet carried her down the pathway._

_Yamucha took one look at her and sprinted in the direction of her pointing finger, ChiChi hot on his heels. They didn't even reach the treeline before they saw the two men breach the top of the trees, one of them carrying Gohan by his tail. ChiChi screamed for Nimbus, but by the time the cloud reached her, the men were specks in the sky, and Yamucha wrapped his arms around her like bands of steel._

"_No, ChiChi," he said, his own voice choking on tears, "even if you got to them, you can't fight them—you would fall off of Nimbus and die." ChiChi turned in his arms and pressed her face into Yamucha's gi, _so much like Goku's_._

"_Gohan," she whimpered, fisting Yamucha's gi in her fists, "Gohan, my baby."_

"_We'll get them back," Yamucha promised. "We'll get them back, ChiChi."_

_But she knew it was an empty promise, and that she would never see her family again._

* * *

><p>Gohan hunkered down in his seat, pulling his lips to one side and scowling at his foe. Bulma listened as he talked quietly to himself, finally writing down his final answer. "Is that right?" he asked, tugging on Bulma's sleeve. She set down her cultures and glanced at his work.<p>

"Sorry, hun," she said, tapping at a negative sign in front of a number earlier in the equation. "Try again."

"You tricked me!" Gohan accused, glaring at her.

"I did not—it's right there!" Bulma huffed, pointing again. "Now, erase your wrong answer and try again!"

He huffed and scrubbed at the paper with his stubby eraser. "Mom always tells me what to look out for," he grumbled, planting his elbows on the table and his fists against the side of his head, preparing to do battle once again.

Loading the centrifuge at the opposite table, Bulma rolled her eyes. "Well, she was wrong to do that. When you get older, you won't have a prophet following you around everywhere, unlocking all of life's little mysteries for you." She turned the machine on and circled back around to his little frame, perched on a tall lab stool. He was focused on the equation, tracing its progression with the eraser end of his pencil with a fierce intensity that she'd seen on his father's face more than a few times over the years, and that she'd come to recognize in Vegeta and the others.

Bulma sighed and ruffled his thick hair with her hand. _No matter what ChiChi wants, she's not going to be able to school the Saiyan out of this kid._ She watched as Gohan began writing his answer and smiled. "Yep, there ya go, kiddo. You're making good progress," she told him, taking the stool beside him and grabbing a few folders of patient records, "I mean, this is pretty basic algebra but you've blasted through it in the past month. I should really test your IQ sometime…"

"You don't really need to test it," Orja said, running her hand over Gohan's head as she passed him on her way to the other side of the table. "He's already leaps and bounds over his peers on Earth, from the reports I've seen, at least." She pulled out a stool opposite Bulma and sat, sliding her glasses up onto her nose. "I have some of your paperwork from the past week and I thought that I would go over some of it with you, if you have time?"

"Sure," Bulma chirruped. Weeks had passed since _that day_ but Bulma still felt awful about wrapping her major girl-crush up in the fallout of Gohan's arrival.

Orja cracked a rare half-smile and flicked her glossy braid over her shoulder. "I've been very impressed with your precision and dedication to detail since you've arrived here. I keep expecting it to slip at some point but you haven't disappointed me yet. I've heard that you were in a managing position back on Earth?"

_That's putting it simply_, Bulma thought, and her stomach turned over. She thought of her office back at Capsule Corp—the cluttered drafting table, the sleek hardwood floors, and the wide windows overlooking the manicured yard separating the business office from the main residence. "Yes, I was," she answered, striving for neutral and hitting wistful instead.

"It shows. You work well with the others. I know that you had to step in for Anyippa last week and everyone has said that you were extremely helpful. Next time that a spot opens up, I'll see what I can do about slipping you up a rung or two. Now then," Orja continued without missing a beat, "These labs that you did on that Qossac girl—Evoq? Have you had a chance to talk to her since the results came back?"

"Not yet—I know that she's in one of the storage compartments that have been converted into a—men's retreat," Bulma said, glancing at Gohan, who seemed oblivious and engrossed in his next equation. "I'll get in touch with Wema tomorrow and see if she'll produce her for a few hours."

Orja nodded and jotted a note at the margin of Evoq's lab report. "And I saw that Shoga—he's a second class, under Prince Vegeta's command, right?—came in for another physical. It says here that you've been tracking his iron levels over the past few months. What are you thinking?"

"Well, as you can see from the line chart—yep, right there—his iron levels have been fluctuating a bit oddly. He first presented with below-normal levels after Roqq, when he was admitted for the regen tank…"

* * *

><p>Daikon wasn't leading her back to her room.<p>

Bulma paused in the hallway after Daikon kept going up the stairs instead of getting off at F deck. "Should I go back on my own?" She called up to him, stepping out of the way to let a pair of Tungas pass by.

"You're moving quarters," he called back, stopping and planting his feet in a wide stance, arms crossed, on the landing above her. _God, but he's big_, she thought, not for the first time since meeting him. "The Prince was given better rooms, and you're along for the ride, naturally."

"Better rooms?" she asked, starting up the stairs after him. "…why, though?"

Daikon barked out a laugh and gestured to get off on the next deck, which was higher than Bulma had ever been, except when she had visited Frieza's rooms on the top deck. "Because we did a good job on Roqq," he stated, as if it were obvious to the world.

_A good job_, Bulma repeated in her mind, thinking of Roqqi's jovial smile and deep laugh. She looked at her feet as she walked next to Daikon, putting one foot in front of the other on the gray metal of the floors and then, unbidden, she remembered how hard the floor felt that next day, when the Roqqani had dragged her down and shoved her face into it, how cold it felt when they ripped her clothes—

"Here," Daikon announced, stopping short and pulling her out of her thoughts. Bulma shook her head, shaking herself out of the memory, and looked through the doorway that Daikon jerked his thumb at.

And laughed in disbelief.

She had been expecting maybe ten extra square feet but not _this_. "You can come in, Daikon," Bulma invited as she stepped past him and through the much-wider casement. Instead of a direct entry into the bedroom as with her old quarters, she and Daikon entered a large sitting room that seemed to lead straight into space, given the floor-to-ceiling window that constituted the back wall of the room. They were traveling at superluminal speed again (and reaching their next destination within the next few days), and the streamers of photons were even more beautiful when they weren't framed by an oblong window casement. A few Saiyans—Radditz and two others that she had met but whose names escaped her—nodded at her as she entered. The sofa and two armchairs on which they lounged faced each other across a table centered over one of the rugs from the old room, all arranged so that it would be possible to walk from the door to the window in a fairly straight line, and directly to Bulma's right, a deeper, longer desk backed up to the wall, accompanied by a swivel desk chair.

"Is Prince Vegeta here?" she asked, finally asked, trailing her fingers along the edge of the desk. Bulma had learned she received a much more favorable response from Vegeta's men and women when she referred to him by his title, though, as a group, they seemed to have deemed her veritably invisible after everyone found out about her inability to carry a child to term. They talked to her in the lab, or when basic manners necessitated it, but that was about it. She passed her days under the radar, generally ignored by about 95% of the Saiyans aboard.

Raditz pointed at the doorway behind the sofa. "In the bedroom," he told her, though his voice seemed tinged with more surliness than she was used to hearing from him. She murmured her thanks with a side glance and stepped through the doorway into the next room.

She almost squealed at the sight of the space in the bedroom. They actually had a set of drawers in here, and bedside tables on either side of the bed. She'd been so tired of dropping all of her stuff on the floor after working in bed. No floor-to-ceiling window here, just a picture window like in the last room, but no other furniture either. _I'll just have to remedy that_, Bulma mused. "Vegeta?" she called out, already heading into the closet.

"Oh my god, I think I've died and gone to heaven," she sighed, drinking in the sheer depthof the closet. It was nothing compared to her closet at home, but it was certainly at least triple the size of their old closet down on F deck. Vegeta was sitting crosslegged at the opposite end of the closet with his back to her, rearranging clothes in a low drawer.

"Yeah, there's finally space for my own shit," he muttered without looking back at her.

Bulma rolled her eyes walked inside the closet and kicked off her shoes into one of the corners. "Speaking of good moods, why is Raditz so cranky?"

"He was being sloppy in training today so I made him move all of your clothes and hang them up," he said with a flippant wave at the dresses and clothes lining the walls.

Bulma snickered—and then groaned. "Please tell me he didn't move my underwear, Vegeta."

He looked over his shoulder at her with an appalled look on his face. "Fuck. No. He's not going anywhere near anything like that."

"Who did then?" When awkward silence followed her question, she moved closer to him and, with an eye towards the door, through which she heard the others raucously jeering at each other, hissed, "Remember—we promised not to lie to each other anymore."

"Oh, please, woman," Vegeta snarled back, finally turning his head up to look at her, "that promise does not extend to such trivial matters as these."

"Knowing who touched my underwear is not _trivial_, Vegeta!"

He pressed his lips together in a harsh line and the _slightest_ amount of pink rose in his tan cheeks. "Fine. _I_ moved them. I was going to ask Parseri but…"

"You didn't know how to ask?" Bulma finished with an arched brow. Vegeta held her gaze for a beat longer and then decisively turned back to re-stacking his jumpsuits. "Well, thank you. I appreciate it," she said in a much more concise and conciliatory tone. "Daikon said that we get these new rooms because of Roqq? I find that hard to believe, given all that's happened. Frieza doesn't seem to like us very much these days."

"He doesn't have a choice," Vegeta said. "He has to keep up appearances if he wants to keep all the pieces moving in his favor."

Bulma exhaled heavily and pressed her fingers to her temples. "Vegeta, you drive me crazy with this half-answer bullshit you do."

Rolling his eyes towards the ceiling, Vegeta finally explained: "Groups bid for jobs. When they get a job and execute it well, Frieza moves them into better living quarters and gives them better benefits. His personal feelings aside, if he didn't abide by his promises, no one would bid for the jobs and his business wouldn't function."

"And this room? Was someone knocked out for it?"

"More or less. The Cronifs were in this position before but they've been transferred over to Cooler's ship. My men get their living quarters, too. Four to a room with a head now, instead of eight with no head." His voice warmed up at the end, and he closed his drawer with a satisfied look on his face.

"The captains?" Bulma asked, wanting to let him talk about his soldiers some more.

"Into rooms like the one we just left," he answered, looking up at her with the barest smile curving the corner of his mouth.

She grinned at him and dropped to her knees behind him. "Good," she purred, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and dropping her chin into the crook of his neck. "I want the chaise from our old room."

"What?" Vegeta asked, and cut his eyes sideways to take in her profile. "Why?"

Bulma dramatically sighed and shook her head. "We need it to put under the window in the bedroom. The wall is really empty over there."

"The wall is empty," he repeated in a flat voice. "So you want to drag that piece of shit up halfway across the ship because a wall is empty."

"Well," Bulma murmured (since the soldiers outside were still being loud), "if Frieza has to put on the appearances of being in a giving mood…" Tilting her head, she ran the tip of her nose along the shell of his ear and watched as his eyes drifted closed.

"I doubt he'll want to set that precedent," he protested with a voice that had dropped an octave when she took the lobe of his ear between her blunt teeth and tugged. She felt the vibrations against her chest and shivered. He rumbled again when she flicked her tongue against the corner of his jaw, and she hummed against his neck when he unwound his tail from his waist and twisted it up her bare thigh. "Fuck, I forgot you wore a skirt today," he sighed without looking back, sliding his tail up underneath her hem and tilting his head back against her shoulder when it found the smooth skin in the crease of her hip.

"I don't know, Vegeta," she breathed, spreading her hands wide on his chest and sliding one down to where hard muscle covered his ribs. She could feel his heart speeding up against her hands, and she moved to his side, where she had better access to lean in and press openmouthed kisses to his neck. "It might be a worse precedent for him to turn down the small requests of soldiers that have served him well and done their jobs as asked. You're just settling into your new rooms and your silly, _silly_ wife wants to feel at home."

Her hand had found him, heavy and straining against his jumpsuit and she laughed breathlessly as he reached around to fist his hand in her hair and kiss her, his lips slightly missing their mark. It was awkward, with her still right next to him, but she adjusted and jerked in _painpleasure_ when his teeth accidentallyonpurpose snagged on her lower lip. "Send them away," she murmured into his open mouth when the soldiers outside hollered and laughed at another joke.

"Get out!" he thundered, and Bulma didn't even care when she heard footsteps pounding on the floor and lewd encouragements thrown into the bedroom. "And close the door!" In mere seconds, it was just the two of them and Bulma could think of no good reason to move from where they were.

She threw her leg over his and worked her fingers underneath the top section of his jumpsuit. His skin was warm and smooth except for where he was scarred and she pushed upwards until it was off. Now she had skin to gain traction on and dig her nails into when he slipped her out of her jacket and pushed the straps of her tank and bra down in one fell swoop. "You really want that chaise, don't you?" he laughed, and ran his tongue along a cup of her bra before pulling it down.

"Yes, I do," she replied, letting her fingers trip along the cords of his neck. He kissed her again. "I have fond memories of it."

"Of a piece of furniture? You're insane, woman."

She laughed and let her head fall back as he worked his way up and down her neck. "Please, Vegeta, get it for me. I really, really," she purred with a teasing smile, reaching down between them to slip her fingers beneath the waistband of his pants and slide them back and forth to feel his muscles quake against her knuckles, his shaky exhale against her temple, "_really_ want it."

"I would get it myself now if it didn't mean leaving you in here at the same time," he rumbled against her clavicle. "But if you _really _want it, I'll submit a request."

"I do, I d—" her response was cut off by a highpitched squeak when his fingers slid underneath her panties for the first time, and he cursed into her ear as they slipped and slid and sank easily.

"Bulma—" He moaned (pleaded, with her firm hand all the way south, now) "Let me—"

They pushed everything out of the way and she rose up and then slowly down again and he groaned and wrapped his arms around her waist while she rocked against him. Impatiently, he shoved the rest of her shirt and bra down and brought her breasts to his mouth and she moaned and let her head fall back, bracing her undulating on his shoulders.

"I get it now," she said to the ceiling. "Why you do it all." She flattened her hands and pressed until he laid back on the cold floor of their closet but he didn't even flinch. He looked up at her with hooded eyes as she rose and fell over him, his hips pressing upwards in tandem.

"It's for them, isn't it?" she asked—but not expecting an answer. "You do it for them." Vegeta's eyes closed and he gripped her thighs, focusing on the flexion of her quads. She saw the muscle working in his jaw and she reached for his wrists, wrapping her own hands around them. "They're the best and they deserve the best."

He twisted his hands and tugged at her arms until she lay atop him. "Vegeta?" Bulma asked, but he kissed her, wrapping his arms around her back. "I'm right then," she said in a high voice, when he broke away and snapped his hips against hers, but he didn't respond. "They deserve the best," she murmured in his ear, her voice getting thin as she spiraled higher and higher, "and you want to take care of them—they need you—"

He rolled her over onto her back and set his mouth at the soft skin under her chin, sucking up a purple bloom until her head thrashed from side to side. Her soft blue hair swirled around her head, her brow furrowed, and her hips moved restlessly, and Vegeta realized the change in position had caused her pleasure to plateau. "Fuck," he muttered, sliding his hand between their bodies. She shuddered and sighed his name and ran her hands along his shoulders and into his hair. Her eyes began to turn glassy and lose focus, and he ran his nose along her cheekbone. "C'mon," he urged, removing his hand and wrapping it in her hair. He ground his hips down into hers and she arched upwards, her legs starting to spasm against his side. "There you go, there you go, gods damn it, Bulma, you're so fucking—" he cut off as she tightened up all around him, legs squeezing tight and her face breaking out in the most amazing flush.

He wanted to sit back on his heels and pull her hips up to his but that would mean leaving behind the press of her breasts against his chest, so he slid an arm under her hips to slide deeper. She was still spasming, so he knew he wouldn't last long. Vegeta pressed his face into her neck and he heard himself saying her name over and over again until his hips stuttered against hers and he pressed himself deep to spend inside her.

Bulma reveled in the heavy weight of Vegeta bearing down on her and his shaky breaths against her neck. She ran her fingers through his hair and scraped her fingernails along his scalp, smiling when he shivered. He finally raised himself up on his hands, and Bulma smirked at him, moving her hands down his body and back up. He leaned down and nudged her nose with his before slanting his mouth over hers. "Do I get this treatment every time you want something?" he asked in a gravely voice, quirking an eyebrow.

"If I actually get what I want in the end, perhaps," she replied, and Vegeta laughed. He was always more open after sex, Bulma had realized a while ago, and his lighter humor and his obvious enamorment with her (though he did a pretty good job of covering it up the rest of the time) had allowed her to be more open with him as well. Months ago, she would have shriveled up and died at the suggestion that she might not mind Vegeta's company, much less enjoy it. But here, the line between his eyebrows had disappeared, the corner of his mouth turned upwards instead of downwards, and he looked at her like he wanted to … look at her forever.

"Well, then," Vegeta said, rolling them to their sides, "I'll have to make sure to follow through."

* * *

><p>Kabocha and Parseri were kicking the ever-loving shit out of each other in the training room again, though Parseri was maintaining a pretty good margin over her twin. She twisted up and around, whipping her foot over Kobocha's forearm and into the side of his head.<p>

"What the FUCK," Kabocha snarled, shaking his head to clear the ringing.

Parseri grinned—more like bared her teeth—at Kabocha. "Keep leavin' it open and Imma keep hittin' it."

He set his mouth in a firm line and charged forward at Parseri, catching her by the hair and kneeing her in the stomach. Vegeta watched her breathe into it (she'd let Kabocha in, the idiot) and jam her fist upwards and into Kabocha's jaw. He retaliated by dragging her back with him by her hair, and twisting her down onto the floor where his larger bulk would work in his favor. Parseri fought against this change of plane tooth and nail, but Kabocha wrestled her underneath him, pinning her arms down with his knees and throwing his arms up in victory. He leant down to rub her face in it, but she reared up and head butted him. The shock allowed her to wrest one arm out and shove him off of her, and the game was on again.

"Mr. Vegeta," the little half-breed whispered, sliding up alongside his prince. Vegeta cast a scathing look upwards at Nappa, through whose legs Gohan had slipped unnoticed. His power level was so low that his movements weren't even caught on scouters.

"What do you want, brat?"

Gohan lifted a fist to his mouth—"Put that thumb in your mouth again, brat, and I'll cut it off"—dropped it, and asked, "If Miss Parseri is Mr. Kabocha's boss, then why are they fighting each other? Mr. Kabocha knows that he is going to lose anyway…"

"You only learn by sparring with people that are better than you. Same reason why you spar with your father," Vegeta said, looking down into Gohan's serious face and seeing the brat's tail twist and turn behind him. "Put your tail around your waist. Someone's going to step on it."

Gohan immediately curled his tail around his tummy, using his little fingers to help the end wrap around the base. "But I beat my dad sometimes," he told Vegeta, who looked at him strangely. The child seemed completely sincere, though, so Vegeta shrugged it off. Perhaps Goku had yielded for his son's sake a few times, and there was no reason to belabor the point. Vegeta darted his eyes over to Kakarott (he had decided to stick him in with Parseri's squad—that decision had been made the moment he had idiotically refused to hit Parseri because she was a woman), who was squatting down with some third-class warriors against a wall on the other side of the room, seemingly oblivious to the conversation happening between Gohan and Vegeta.

Without a second thought, Vegeta returned his gaze to the fight before him, and watched as Parseri backed Kabocha into a corner. She lifted up into the air so she could whale on his upper body with her fists and feet. The rest of her unit, watching from benches, cheered and egged each of the parties on. Nearly all of them were yelling for Kabocha to turn the fight around, and that satisfied Vegeta. It was important to have tight unity among the squad separate from their loyalty to Parseri and Vegeta, and he knew that if there were little support for Kabocha, she would be rooting out the cause of such apathy as soon as she scraped her brother off the floor.

The door to the hallway slid open, interrupting the fight. Parseri touched back down to the ground, and Kabocha immediately hunched over, dropping his hands to his knees to catch his breath.

One of Frieza's lower-ranked lieutenants stood in the doorway, hands on his hips. "I'd always wondered what it was like to watch a bunch of monkeys fight," he sneered, stepping inside the massive training room and letting the door slide shut behind him. "And now my dreams had been ruined. I thought there would be less fists and more feces."

Vegeta barked out a laugh. "Oh, a monkey joke. You'll have to forgive me if I don't remember your name, Lieutenant…?"

The soldier's handsome grin twisted. "Borix. Lieutenant of the—"

"Yeah, I don't care," Vegeta cut him off, waving his hand and rolling his eyes. "You can't throw a rock without hitting one of Frieza's lieutenants on this ship. I'm much more interested what orifice you let Frieza stick it in so that you get to wear that fancy little pin on your breastplate." The rest of the Saiyans chuckled under their breath, and Vegeta granted Borix a toothy grin. "See, _that's_ an insult."

Borix's blue face darkened into purple. "Well at least my species' only chance for survival isn't tied up with a bunch of useless sacks of meat—"

"At least my species is worth saving," Vegeta snarled.

"That's the half-breed?" Borix asked, pointing at Gohan. Across the room, Goku jumped to his feet.

"Now, now," he said, clapping his hands and forcing a laugh, "there's no reason to be so testy with each other! Lieutenant, I'm sure each species has its own flaws and why don't we just all agree to disagree?"

Borix looked from Goku to Gohan and then jabbed a finger in Goku's breastplate. "You're the father, aren't you? You're the one that came back all addled from Earth?"

Vegeta was surprised to see several of Kakarott's squadmate stand up behind him, fists clenched, but he snapped his fingers at them and motioned for everyone to stay where they were. "Nobody touch the _Lieutenant_ here. Whoever ends up in the brig is going to be dealing with me as soon as they get out," he warned.

"I don't need a guest right," Borix sneered at him, "and you don't have to worry about me turning tail to Frieza after a little scuffle."

"Oh, I think I do," Vegeta deadpanned.

Borix threw his head back and laughed. "You're questioning _my_ scruples when you have your own men getting worthless half-breeds off of weaklings living in the middle of a galactic swamp?"

"_Hey!_" Gohan shouted as he jumped up, surprising even Vegeta.

"Gohan, sit down and be quiet," Kakarott ordered, but Gohan didn't listen.

"You're being mean," Gohan yelled. "You were not invited inside and now you're calling my mom names! Please apologize and leave!"

Borix smirked at Vegeta. "Now you have a child protecting you?" Vegeta glared back at him. "Lemme tell you one thing, kid—the best thing your mom has ever done was spread her legs for a full-blooded Saiyan. They're dirty, mangy creatures, but they're better than the puny species your mother is a part of."

"Stop it!" Gohan shouted, balling his hands into fists. Vegeta's scouter beeped, indicating that someone's power level was rising rapidly. Neither Parseri nor Kabocha looked upset enough to be letting their power jump all over, and Kakarott seemed more concerned about his screaming son than the actual conversation taking place. No one else in the room had the power to be tracking numbers this high, so he tapped the side of his scouter to get it to calm down. "Please just go away!"

"I think it's time for you to go," Vegeta stated. "As you can see, you're stirring up trouble and distracting my men from their training."

"Oh, but I thought that you were showing me what it was like to give an insult, Prince Vegeta," Borix said with feigned humility. "I'm just returning the favor."

"You started it!" Gohan told him.

"Now _you're_ being rude, kid. What happened to all of the 'pleases' from a few minutes ago? I thought that maybe your sweet mother had actually groomed some class into you. Then again, as weak as humans are, they might need that politeness in a few years. Why don't you tell me where your mama lives, kid, and I'll make sure I _personally_ take care of her. I'll have her screaming for your daddy by the time I'm done with her."

Vegeta took a step forward so as to bodily remove Borix from the room, but before he landed his first step, he was swept backwards and into the wall by what felt like a concrete slab. He hit the wall with such force that he had to struggle to take in a breath and when his eyes finally focused again, he saw that all of his men were tossed back along the perimeter of the room. His scouter was screaming in his ear, and his eyes widened in disbelief at the number running along the bottom of the pane of glass.

Gohan was standing in the center of the room, his hair blown straight up and blue lightning crackling around his small body. He had grabbed a fistful of Borix's tentacles and was punching and kicking him, screaming unintelligibly. Kakarott seemed to have only fallen to his hands and knees, and within the space of a breath, he flash-stepped to Gohan and tapped the side of the brat's neck with the edge of his hand, knocking him out.

As soon as the brat fell unconscious to the floor, Vegeta felt a huge weight lift off of his body. Gohan's power had been pushing all of them back against the walls, even after the initial surge. Vegeta's scouter fell silent, as did the rest of the room. Parseri met Vegeta's eyes from across the mats, and shook her head in disbelief, speechless for once in her life. The other Saiyans slumped down onto the floor, staring at Gohan with mouths agape.

"Gods," Nappa murmured. "_Gods_."

Borix, bruised and bleeding, lifted a shaky hand to his scouter, and before Vegeta could get a word out, two of Parseri's squad jumped on him, wrenching the scouter from his ear and crushing it beneath one of their feet. They held him to the ground, where he screamed for mercy, for help, and looked to Vegeta. "He can't leave here," Shiso, the woman, said. "We're all dead if he does."

Vegeta looked over at Gohan, passed out now, remembered how quickly Kakarott had recovered from the initial blast to reach his son ("_but I beat my dad sometimes_") and nodded once.

"_NO!_" Borix shrieked, but the Nasu put his finger to the Lieutenant's forehead and fired. Borix's body slumped to the floor, and Kakarott looked away with a grimace.

"If had left here," Vegeta said to him, crossing the mat to stand next to him and look down at Gohan's form, "your son would be on the dissecting table within the hour, all of us would be dead, and Earth would be purged by the end of the week. So don't you turn your back like there was something else that could have been done."

Shaking his head, Kakarott's frown deepened. "It's the finality of death that I don't like."

"From the moment we are born, we are on a collision course with death. We just avoided crashing into it today." Vegeta nudged Gohan with his foot. "Now if you don't want your son getting caught in the middle of this, I'd advise moving him out of the way."

Kakarott gave him a queer sideglance, but reached down and picked his son up. Gohan began to squirm in his father's arms, and then Vegeta's attention was sidetracked by Parseri's foot crashing into the side of his face. He grunted and resisted the urge to retaliate, instead standing still while she launched a barrage of attacks against his body.

By the time the body was dragged down to the medbay, Parseri's squad had turned the training room upside down and Vegeta was as bruised and battered at Borix. He had to go to the medbay as well, leaving Parseri and Nappa to go before Frieza on bended knee and swear with their fists over their hearts that Borix had challenged Vegeta to a spar and then played dirty when he knew he wasn't going to win. The attacks on their prince had spurred a few soldiers into action and before anyone could stop them, they had killed Borix.

"And how do you plan to punish the members of your squad, Captain?" Frieza drawled, resting his fist on his hand and swishing his tail in boredom.

"They're confined to quarters for a calendar week and will receive half rations, my lord Frieza," Parseri answered, keeping her head bowed. The two that had executed Borix had offered to take the fall, and Parseri was taking them up on their offer.

Dodoria huffed from his seat along the wall. "That's all? Lord Frieza, you gotta insist on killing them for killing Borix."

Frieza rolled his eyes. "I don't know exactly what that would accomplish. I can't just go around killing everyone that takes a training session too far. I would be executing half of my purging forces. Besides, it's not like Borix was particularly useful. Remind me to give his position to Quari tomorrow morning. Maybe he'll be more productive than Borix was. I hear the little Prince is in the medbay, Captain?"

"Yes, my Lord," Parseri answered.

"See," Frieza said, gesturing towards Dodoria, "Vegeta has his fair share and the two soldiers that killed Borix are being punished by their superior officer. I'm not going to do more for someone like _Borix_ of all my lieutenants. You're dismissed, Captain. Take your brother with you and pray you have better news for me the next time you have to come before me." He waved his hands and Parseri and Nappa backed out of his reception room. "These Saiyans will be the absolute death of me," Frieza sighed, rubbing his temples. "If they weren't so damn valuable I would have jettisoned them ages ago."

"Pass them off to Cooler?" Dodoria offered. Frieza immediately shot him in the leg with a ki blast.

"If you ever mention anything so asinine again I will strangle you myself," Frieza snarled. "Cooler already got the Cronifs out from under me, and they're _useless_ on cloudy days. The Saiyans belong to _me_ and I'll be damned if I pass them off to anyone. Now get out my sight—you're getting blood all over my floor."

* * *

><p>Vegeta finally got back to his rooms very late that night. Walking the corridors at night was not something that he did often, but always appreciated when he had the chance. With the machinery and air systems turned off, the ship was silent and a man could finally think. What happened earlier in the day with Gohan was still a shock to his system, and Vegeta was still working through what had to be done about it.<p>

He had thought the child to be a weakling, but clearly that wasn't the case. The power level he saw today was astronomical—even beyond his own. Yet as soon as he collapsed, his power level returned to the negligible level that Vegeta was used to. Rage was what triggered it today, but Vegeta obviously couldn't test this hypothesis again. And what would be the source? Radditz and Kakarott had an impressive lineage through their mother, but nothing that would justify what he saw today.

He walked through the door of his new rooms and was surprised to see Bulma still awake. She was sitting in one of the armchairs in the dimly-lit sitting room, reading off of her electronic tablet. "I heard _you_ had a long day," she said, resting her head on her fist and quirking her brow in his direction. Her clean skin was still pink from the shower, and she had piled her damp hair on top of her head in a messy bun.

Suddenly, Vegeta remembered (not that he had forgotten) that Gohan's mother was human, and that maybe…maybe human blood didn't water anything down, after all. His stomach turned over and he moved over to his wife, taking the tablet from her and setting it on the table behind her. Her mouth opened easily under his, and he sighed at the sensation of her fingers carding into his hair.

"That kind of day, huh?" She murmured against his temple as he pressed his lips to the mark he left under her jaw just a few days ago. He hummed in response and sat down on his heels in front of her, placing a palm on the calf she had curled up onto the seat.

"We have to get off this ship," he told her in a low voice, raising his eyes to meet hers. "All of us." Her eyebrows drew down, and then she pressed her lips into a line and nodded in agreement, reaching out to run her hand over his sharp widow's peak. Without another word on the subject, he tugged at her calf to untangle her legs and run the flat of his palms up the inside of her thighs. She'd shaved her legs tonight (not that Vegeta really cared, honestly, and he'd told her so) and the light scent of her moisturizer reached his nose as he leaned down and lightly nipped the inside of her knee. "Vegeta," she said on a sigh, and he stood back up, tugging her to her feet.

She let him lead her into the bedroom, slide the shorts off of her hips, and guide her backwards onto the bed. He knelt down and set his mouth to her, working her over in the darkness, having mapped her geography thoroughly long ago. Her thighs strained against his hand and shoulder and her body writhed on the mattress above him while he filled his senses with the _tastetouchscentfeel_ of her. By the time the ship slowed to a halt in Lulani's orbit, they were too wrapped up in each other to even care.

* * *

><p>If you haven't already joined, there's a google+ group called We're Just Saiyan and it's moderated by MayMayB and MallieP. Come and join us; we have cookies (the cyber kind though, not the eating kind, unfortunately). You can also search for the podcasts on YouTube, they're kiiiiiind of amazing, especially if you're like me and you like your fandom talk mixed with girl talk and gossip.<p>

Please let me know what you think—I really do love getting reviews and hearing what you all think about the characters and the plot and so on and I try to respond to everyone that has a reply link enabled!


	10. Chapter 10

So. I've been fighting with this chapter most of the summer, pretty much ever since I finished the last one and it was never my intention to take this long. I've always known how it would end, basically since I started writing this fic in the first place, but the actual exposition and action has been an absolute clusterfuck to write.

Hope you enjoy!

* * *

><p>"Alright, listen up!" Daikon bellowed as he entered the training room. His squad of seventy soldiers immediately shut up and waited while he walked across the mats to the front of the room and hopped up on a bench against a wall. "I gotta say all of this so pay attention," he ordered, waving his clipboard. His squad snickered and settled down on the floor for the rigamarole that they all had to go through each time that they had shore leave.<p>

Daikon cleared his throat and began: "Unless you've been living under a rock, you will have realized that this ship, SR 2847 of the Planet Trade Organization, is now in geosynchronous orbit with the planet Lulani. This ship entered geosynchronous orbit with Lulani at 2:30 this morning, this fifty-second day of the Universal Calendar Year 2359. This ship will remain in geosynchronous orbit with Lulani for the next four days, departing at 5:00 PM on the fifty-sixth day of the Universal Calendar Year of 2359. Are we all together here?" Daikon asked, running his eyes from one side of his squad to the other and turning his page over. Every one nodded dutifully, so he carried on.

"This squadron, captained by Daikon under Vegeta, Prince of the Saiyans, has been cleared for shore leave while this ship is in geosynchronous orbit with Lulani. Shuttles will be traveling from this ship to the planet twice per day, once at 8:00 AM and once at 4:00 PM. Shuttles will be coming back to the ship from Lulani on a reverse trip after offloading, so it is recommended that you arrive at the shuttle port on Lulani at 8:30 AM and 4:30 PM so as to catch a shuttle back to the ship. The last shuttle will leave Lulani at 3:30 PM on the fifty-sixth. Anyone not on board will be left behind.

"While on Lulani, soldiers are not permitted to engage in hostilities. Soldiers are not permitted to engage in larceny. Soldiers are not to engage in sexual assault of civilians. Lulani has provided this ship and the commanding officers with a list of brothels around the shuttle port and in the city center. Soldiers are expected to pay for any and all services they receive with their own non-fraudulent credits. Inability to pay in full will result in an equivalent docking of pay from the next credit transfer, with 10% interest, and outright refusal to pay at all for services will result in solitary confinement for three days, as well as an equivalent docking in pay from the next credit transfer, with 20% interest. Soldiers are not to discuss the movement of the ship, future engagement of the squadrons, and other related, confidential information with the Lulani or other persons currently staying on Lulani. Is all of this understood and agreed upon?"

His squadron nodded, and Daikon hopped off of his bench to pass around copies of the shore leave contract for his squadron members to sign. "By the way, the Prince and Princess will be on Lulani for a period of time, so keep an eye out for them and assist them if need be. Understood?"

"Yes, Captain," they chorused as they signed the papers and passed them back to him.

"Don't embarrass me," he called out, once he collected up the last of the papers. "Dismissed!"

With a raucous cry, his squad jumped to their feet and bumrushed the doors, eager to pack their shore bag and get off the ship for a while. Daikon followed them out after kicking the mats back into place and ran into Nappa and Radditz outside the door. "The brats are off," he greeted them, flourishing his sheaf of signed contracts. "Is your squad off this turn?"

"No," Nappa replied. "Parseri's is off here; we're off the next time."

Daikon elbowed Radditz in the ribs. "Luckily for you, commanding officers get shore leave no matter what."

Radditz grinned back at him and grabbed at his crotch. "I've worked my way through Wema's girls, I can't wait to get my hands on some Lulani ass." On the other side of Radditz, Nappa made a crude gesture with his fist, clearly on board with Radditz's plans.

Daikon passed them the list of brothels and raised his eyebrows in a challenge. "I'll be on the 8:00 AM shuttle, so if you wanna put your money where your mouth is, I'll see you there."

* * *

><p>Bulma had never been anywhere like Lulani. Well, no, that wasn't exactly true. She'd been places like Lulani, but they were usually confined to conference rooms or ballrooms converted into convention spaces. But…a whole planet of that was a bit to take in, at first.<p>

On their way in from the shuttle pad at the base of the city, they'd passed a variety of establishments, and everything from the clothing shops to the brothels had been neat, tidy, and inviting. The streets were free of litter, the cracks in the sidewalks had been filled in nearly seamlessly, and the shrubbery and trees were perfectly maintained. Vegeta had told her on the way down that Lulani was a service-industry planet. It had started out as a small planet of no particular importance in the middle of a massive interplanetary interchange, but at some point the Council had capitalized on their unique position by restructuring the planet's economy. Now, ships stopped regularly on Lulani, and the whir of ships moving in and out from all directions existed as background noise to the population.

The city was situated on a hill, with the shuttlepad at the bottom, and larger landing strips further outside of the city limits. At the very top, surrounded by all of the massage parlors, banks, barber shops, and other unmentionable stores, sat a large hotel. It was here that the Council had met them—a group of twelve elders that steered the direction of Lulani's present and future. All dressed in what appeared to be professional attire, they discussed Lulani's economy with Frieza in the most strict businesslike tone from their seats at the round table.

Discreetly, Bulma turned her head towards Vegeta. "Are they a part of the PTO?"

They were seated in a sort of amphitheater-like gallery, watching the discussions take place below them and able to listen, thanks to some sort of audio amplification technology that they could hear but could not see. Vegeta shook his head minutely. "No. Lulani is an independent planet. An ally of Frieza's though."

"And…why are we here?" she asked, looking around. The gallery was filled with the heads of the other groups on Frieza's ship—the Yaguris, the Tungas, the Qossacs, and so on. They, too, kept their attention on the talks taking place below them.

"Because our soldiers are the consumers," Vegeta replied, a smirk curving his mouth. The sole light in the large room was focused above the round table in the center of the room, leaving the audience in relative darkness. He leaned over and put his lips by her ear. "The men always appreciate some variety in their rotations."

Bulma frowned at him and jerked her head towards Gohan, who sat on the other side of her, meticulously folding sheets of paper that she had grabbed on their way out of the lab into origami animals. Vegeta rolled his eyes and settled back into his seat, clearly unamused by Bulma's rejection.

Like clockwork, one of the Lulani elders leaned forward and asked: "Where is this half-breed you have talked about, Lord Frieza?" and Frieza looked over his shoulder and fixed his flinty eyes on her. Zarbon had told her this morning that the Lulani are always interested in new discoveries, and that a little "show and tell" would do wonders to keep them on the PTO's good side. Of course, the PTO could always strong arm the Lulani into keeping their ports open, but _what was a bone thrown to the street mutts every now and then_? Bulma looked down at Gohan's head and wondered what ChiChi would think of her little boy referred to as a political bone to be thrown around.

Bulma gently tugged the origami from Gohan's little hands and hoisted him up onto her hip. Vegeta's eyes were shuttered as she passed by him, not ashamed, but like he was hiding something that he hadn't yet told her about. He'd been twitchy all morning, she realized as she descended the steps of the amphitheater seating with Gohan, and she'd ask him about it later.

Gohan buried his face into her neck as they approached Frieza and the Lulani council members. Frieza smirked. "As you can see, councilors, the child isn't the most remarkable specimen. The humans are a weak race, and clearly, even though it appears to be possible to interbreed—which has yet to be proven on a larger scale, my dear councilors—the result is less than desireable."

A female councilor leaned forward, chin on her fist. "There has been no indication of any hidden power, then?"

"None at all." Frieza's gaze on Gohan was cold, and Bulma hugged the boy closer to her. "Our scientific team has been observing him for weeks now, and his power level is completely insignificant and unresponsive."

Bulma felt Gohan tilt his head to peer out of one of his eyes, and his thumb went up to his mouth. The councilors leaned back and forth, whispering to each other in hushed tones. "And you, you are a human?" one of them called out. Their eyes combed over her from head to foot, trying to determine how she was different from them.

"Yes," Bulma replied, and did not elaborate. She and Gohan were being pimped out like museum exhibits to benefit her _captor_, and so she wanted to get this charade over with as soon as possible.

"Her father is the one that invented capsule technology," Frieza continued for her. "The technology will soon be organization wide. I will personally make sure that the Council will receive one of the first batches of encapsulators." The Lulani councilors smiled and nodded, and bile rose in Bulma's throat. She shifted Gohan from one hip to the other to hide how her hands shook in rage and shame, and by the time Gohan was settled into his new spot, she had pasted her businesswoman mask back onto her face.

She smiled at the men and women seated before her. "And, of course, I hope the councilors would allow me to demonstrate the capsule technology when it becomes available for their use. I was the lead engineer under my father for years. The compression can be a bit tricky at first, but practice makes perfect."

The councilors laughed, and Bulma tittered along. Frieza frowned at her and jerked his head, Bulma gratefully took the exit offered. Crossing back into the darkness of the amphitheater seating was wonderful. There had been a time in her life when she would have loved selling capsule technology to these councilors, loved flaunting her intelligence, but now she wanted to be out of Frieza's eyesight and safe in the darkness next to Vegeta.

The councilors rose and clapped their hands three times. "We have very much appreciated this public meeting with Lord Frieza. The time has come, though, for our private meeting. Ladies and gentlemen, we thank you for your time and attention, and hope that you enjoy your time on Lulani. Guides are waiting for you in the lobby if you would like a tour of the city. Please let them know your wishes and they will do their best to accommodate you."

Vegeta met her at the foot of the stairs, sidling close so that the other observers could flow around them on their way out. "Parseri is out there," he told her, putting his hand low on her back as they exited the reception chamber. Bulma glanced up at the casement on their way out—the doors here were like those on Earth. They had hinges and latches, despite the high-tech nature of the city. "Stay with her."

"Where are you off to?" Bulma asked, shifting Gohan to tuck her bangs behind her ear. He was beginning to get antsy, but she wasn't about to put him down with all of these people roaming around without looking where they were going.

"Nappa and Serori want to eat in the Southern Quadrant." He looked over his shoulder and waved Parseri over. "Don't let that brat out of your sight unless you want Frieza to get a hold of you again." His tone was mocking, but the squeeze of his hand on her hip belied lightness.

"I won't." She bounced Gohan on her hip and pulled a face. "We're gonna go exploring, kiddo! What do you think about that?"

"I'm hungry," Gohan said with a pout.

Vegeta rolled his eyes. "Parseri, use your credits to feet the brat."

"Why the fuck do I have to do it?" Parseri was in a simple jumpsuit and light armor today, much like the other Saiyans. They all still wore their scouters, though, to stay in contact with each other and the ship. Bulma had been trying to get issued a scouter, but her position was a shaky one, and she figured that Frieza and his crowd thought that it was easier if she remained entirely dependent on others around her.

"Kakarott's in _your_ squad," he reminded her with a raised brow. They locked eyes for a moment until finally Parseri jerked her head in defeat.

"Well, come the fuck on then; I ain't got all goddamned day." She pivoted on her heel and marched out of the lobby. With a sidelong glance at Vegeta, Bulma waved goodbye and followed her escort out into the sun.

Gohan managed to easily scarf down three bowls of noodles, a bit of fruit because Bulma had insisted, and some sort of icy dessert because he'd made Parseri laugh and she'd bought it for him. Now the three of them meandered down a side street, passing by massage parlors, lounges, high-end casino boutiques, and other shops of varying business. Gohan stopped every now and then to press his palms and face into the glass fronts and bable about what he saw. Only at one place did he want to go in—it was a narrow shop, with clean glass in a red-painted wooden frame.

"Look, look! They have toys!" Gohan called out, pointing at the figurines in the window.

Bulma looked up at the neon sign advertising palm readings and laughed. "No way, kid. This is a fortune teller." Gohan frowned at her and she shrugged. "They…think they can tell your future by looking at your hand or tossing some bones around."

"Bones?" Gohan repeated, his eyes lighting up.

Bulma bopped him on his head and Parseri laughed into her fist, faking a cough. "Geez, your mom needs to bring you down off the mountain more often." She squinted through the window and finally said, "You know what? It can't hurt. That old witch Baba would be proud of me. Just—don't touch anything breakable, Gohan."

The fortune teller's shop was dim, the air still and heavy with the scents of oils and smoke. Parseri coughed for real, this time. "I fucking _hate_ smoke," she wheezed, eyes watering.

"You can wait outside," Bulma offered in a low voice. "We're just going to poke around." Parseri shot her a withering look, and Bulma shrugged. "Don't say I didn't offer."

The front of the shop was unoccupied, but Bulma wasn't particularly interested in buying anything. Wait—did she even have credits? Shouldn't she be receiving some sort of payment for all of her work in the lab? Where was her Black Member Card when she needed it? She ran her fingers over a figurine of a kneeling four-armed woman, fiddled with some dried plants in a wide-mouthed vase. Gohan was messing with some tumbled stones in a box on the floor, and when he moved to touch a small temple on a shelf, Bulma cleared her throat. He ducked away sheepishly. Parseri coughed again, and then sneezed. Bulma gave her another pointed stare over her shoulder, which Parseri returned with equal vigor. Heavy tapestries covered the walls, and Bulma stepped around a solid bookcase to get a closer look at the embroidery on one. Golden scrolls and runic-looking letters against deep red cloth…the mastery of the work was apparent.

The silence of the shop was broken by rustling, and Bulma turned to see a woman emerge through the back doorway. She was younger than Bulma had been expecting—maybe late teens, early twenties. She wore her platinum hair in dreadlocks gathered in a high bun, and her orange skin was covered in blue markings—though whether they were temporary or permanent, Bulma couldn't tell. "Hey," she greeted them, her eyes on Bulma, like she was pleasantly surprised to see her.

"…Hi," Bulma replied, put off by her familiarity. "We're just…looking around."

The young woman smiled slowly and nodded. "Come back and have a cuppa, Princess," she offered, pulling the beaded curtain aside. Bulma looked at Parseri, who shook her head minutely. "The Captain can come check my room for monsters that go bump in the night if she'd like," the woman offered with twinkling eyes. "I promise that you won't find any. That door is the only way in and out."

"I'll stay in the room while you drink your tea," Parseri stated, taking a step towards the woman. "C'mon brat," she called out to Gohan, who was waving around a wand that turned different colors.

"No, you'll stay out here," the woman replied placidly, her smile still in place. Parseri's face hardened and she opened her mouth to argue but the woman cut her off by saying: "I doubt that I can get on a ship faster than the Prince could catch me, Captain. You have nothing to fear."

With a scowl, Parseri moved past the woman and into the back of the shop. Unperturbed, the woman beckoned to Bulma, and let her pass through the beaded curtain ahead of her. The back room was even more dim than the front, lit only by candles on a low chandelier. There could have been windows, but any light that would have been let in had been firmly blocked off by heavy tapestries like the ones in the front room. Parseri walked the perimeter, patting the walls through the fabric and stomping on the floor through the thick rugs. "It seems secure enough," she admitted, but lingered at the doorway with a frown on her face. She was clearly uncomfortable with leaving Bulma alone with the woman, but Bulma didn't feel unsafe, just a bit confused and intrigued.

"I won't be long, Captain," the woman told her, and handed her a box with something that rattled around inside. "The little one can play with these while you wait. Please don't eavesdrop," she added with a chastising tone.

Parseri rolled her eyes and shoved her way back to the front of the shop. The woman gestured for Bulma to sit down on the other side of the low table. Quietly, the woman poured a cup of steaming tea from a heavy iron teapot and passed it to Bulma. The woman's movements were elegant and practiced, and Bulma eyed her suspiciously, waiting until the woman poured herself a cup and drank from it before Bulma sipped it herself.

"Are you homesick much, Princess?" the woman asked after she swallowed, setting the cup on the table and wrapping her palms around the warm china.

Bulma's heart tightened in her chest, immediately picturing the domes of Capsule Corp in her mind and she nodded. "Yes, I am. Of course."

The woman seemed to shrug, but without actually shrugging. "But with the Prince, you're happy as well."

It was a statement, not a question, and Bulma's furrowed her brow. Something ugly twisted inside of her and her first instinct was to deny that she was. _Guilt_, she realized. "I don't think one outweighs the other."

The woman's placid smile seemed to widen, and she tilted her head, searching Bulma's face and taking another sip of her tea. "But with the Other one, you weren't truly happy." The woman reached out and took Bulma's right hand between her own and turned it over, peering at her palm. "He ate away at you."

"Are you talking about Yamcha?" Bulma asked incredulously.

"I don't know his name," the woman told her, matter-of-fact. She flattened her hand out over Bulma's open palm, stretched its plane out wide. "Ah, I see now," she breathed, closing her eyes and leaning her head forward. "I wasn't sure before but—young love. Born from innocence and carried beyond its time." The woman opened her eyes and met Bulma's. "You are not meant for such love now, Princess."

A shiver ran down Bulma's spine as she stared across the table at the woman. "Is this some trick?" she breathed. "Some carnival caper where you try to feel out what I react to?"

The woman shook her head and squeezed Bulma's hand. "No, Princess. I have been waiting for you. I had been worried…that I would not see you before that which will come to pass. The dreams have been determined with you, have brought you forth to me over and over and over again until I thought I had seen all that I could see of you. But dreams only tell so much, even when you are actively seeking them out—everything is sharper now, now that you are here with me."

There was something in the cadence of this woman's voice, and the weight behind her eyes that belied the smoothness of the woman's skin… "How old _are_ you?" Bulma asked in a hushed voice. "How long have you…been waiting?"

The woman raised an eyebrow and smiled. "Long enough."

"And the dreams have told you about me and Vegeta—" The woman waved her hand with a _tsking_ sound.

"The Prince – Vegeta is his name, you say? Lovely name, very regal, if I do say so – didn't show up for years at first. You can imagine my confusion. And the Other shows up now and again, when the dreams see fit to bring him forth. No, Princess, I've dreamt of _you._" The woman closed her eyes again and tipped her head to the side, her ear nearly meeting her shoulder."I've dreamt of a woman with soft hair like ocean water surrounded by dark titans, once weighing her down, and then adrift, and once again pulled by gravity to the star nursery like a whirling galaxy," she murmured, her words flowing one into the other. Then a deep breath, and the woman straightened back up, blinking away her trance.

"But why?" Bulma asked, bewildered. "What do the dreams…say?"

The woman clasped Bulma's hand between her own in a strong grip. She brought her elbows up onto the table, like she was praying, but with Bulma's hand caught in the middle of it. Her eyes bored into Bulma's, the pupils blown wide, and what she said to Bulma she said like she was dying, like these were the last words she would ever tell another soul through gritted teeth. "Do not be afraid. When you are weakest, you will be strongest. You will be lost, Princess, but do not wander. You will carry the torches—you will bear the _blinding_ lights of your people. The others," the woman said, her grip loosening and her hand brushing the back of Bulma's forearm, where goosebumps rippled and hair stood on end, "they weren't for you."

At the woman's last words, bile rose in Bulma's throat and she jerked her hands away to press her face into them. She shuddered, trying to swallow the fear and guilt in her throat, and the woman circled around the table and wrapped her arms around Bulma's shoulders.

The woman murmured soft and soothing nothings into Bulma's hair, ran her warm hands over Bulma's back and arms, and Bulma _missed missed missed_ her mother, how would she go through this again without her mother with her? The woman reached forward and brought the mug of spicy tea to Bulma's lips. "Drink, Princess," she said, and Bulma sipped obediently. The warm liquid slid down her throat, and heat seeped outwards from her belly, through her arms and lets, and to her fingers and toes. Bulma reluctantly pulled herself from the woman's embrace and set the mug down with a heavy sigh.

"It's going to get worse, isn't it?" Bulma asked, meeting the woman's eyes.

The woman nodded. "Yes."

Bulma felt strangely calm and drained at the same time, that strange feeling that comes after a cathartic cry. "I'm not lost yet, am I?" she asked.

The woman shook her head, earrings swaying with the movement, and she wrapped her hand around Bulma's again, and Bulma noticed again the comforting heat emanating from the woman's body, and the strength in the woman's elegant fingers.

"Do not be afraid."

* * *

><p>The lab was blissfully quiet, given that such a large portion of the crew had been granted leave to go planetside. Fewer staff also meant more counterspace, and Orja was using this time to make sure all of the patients' charts were updated in the network. She'd been there for a while, trying to get the work done before the ship left Lulani and she would be surrounded by chattering people using socialization to avoid getting work done.<p>

She pulled up Bulma's file on the computer, only to find that the woman's recent bloodwork results had already been imported into her chart. _Convenient_, Orja thought, and since all of the numbers looked within normal ranges, Orja was about to move on to the next chart until she saw the time stamp in the bottom corner. The results had been imported at three o'clock standard time that very afternoon, a time at which Orja knew no one had been in the lab but herself and the patients in the back of the wing.

"Strange," Orja muttered. With a few keystrokes, Orja dove into the administrative program. Her eyes darted along the lines of code until she saw where someone had created a backdoor with an automatic timer. It was subtle work, and if Orja hadn't been raised on Juqard, a planet that had provided networking capabilities and infrastructure to the PTO, she would have easily missed it. Orja's fingers tapped away at her keyboard, peeling back layer after layer of the backdoor entry, which led to a discreet hacking program. Orja sucked on the inside of her cheek and tried to crack the hacking program. It seemed to have a dead end, but there was something about the way the lines of code ended…

Orja drummed her fingers on the desk after a few tries yielded no results. She laced her fingers behind her head and squinted at the program on her screen through her glasses. Finally, she saw the method behind the madness and, fingers flying across the keyboard, she cracked the hacking program, which led into Bulma's file, and Bulma's file only. "What have you been up to, Bulma?" Orja mused. The program had changed a few of the values from the most recent bloodwork analysis after it had been imported into her file—all of the same values had been changed in her bloodwork analyses, starting from nearly three months back.

It seemed strange, to create a program to just alter a few values in her bloodwork. They were proteins and hormones unique to the human organism, so unique that new lines had to be created in the program to accommodate them when Bulma had been brought on board. The values had started changing after she was brought on board, and the program had altered the values to make it look like they had been steady this whole time; like nothing was changing.

And then Orja realized what she was looking at, and her heart began to pound in her ears.

* * *

><p>A distant rumble woke Bulma from her sleep. Vegeta shifted next to her, raising up on one elbow. She pushed her hair out of her face and peered up at his profile, taking in his downturned mouth in the faint light filtering in from the city outside. "What's going on?"<p>

"I don't know," he replied. He sat silent for another moment before tossing his covers back and circling around the bed to the window. "There are shuttles coming into the port," he said, surprise and confusion turning his last few words up, almost turning his statement into a question.

"I thought shuttles only had two runs," Bulma said, yawning and running her fingers through Gohan's hair. Their dinner had run past the time of the shuttle run, and Goku was sleeping on a narrow cot downstairs. Vegeta had glowered when Bulma had snuck Gohan into the room, but she'd told him to essentially grit his teeth and bear it.

"They do," he replied, stepping closer to the window and squinting his eyes. "They're…full." Through the glass, he watched the shuttles empty themselves onto the shuttlepad. Something was glinting under the lights of the shuttlepad, on all of the persons spilling out onto Lulani. Behind him, he listened to Bulma rustle in the sheets, soon overcome by the pounding of the blood in his ears. _No, it can't be…_ "They're in uniform," he bit out, whirling away from the window and turning on the light to the room.

Bulma scrambled out of bed, shaking Gohan awake and searching for her shoes. "Is this a purge?" She asked, her voice thin with panic.

Serori kicked the door in, nearly clean off its hinges, dressed only in a tanktop, a pair of underwear, and her boots. "Where is your scouter?" She screamed at Vegeta, "Where is it?"

Serori had never raised her voice to Vegeta before, Bulma realized foggily, pushing her feet into her shoes and helping Gohan into his.

"In the bathroom," he shouted back, and Gohan began to cry, but Serori was already screaming back: "You son of a bitch, I've been calling you on it for the past ten minutes!"

Over the shouting in the room, the hotel was coming to life. Footsteps began pounding down halls, doors opened and slammed, and flashes of light appeared through the window. _Ki blasts_, Bulma thought, a coldness spreading from the nape of her neck through her shoulders and chest.

"They're coming for _her_," Serori said. "They're coming for all of _us_. I got a message from Weila-"

"It doesn't matter," Vegeta interrupted. "We're wasting time. We have to get out of here." He looked back at Bulma, and Bulma saw stark fear written across his face. "We have to get to the shuttles. We can't hide from scouters," he told her, and she knew that a legion of Frieza's forces lay between this room and the shuttlepad.

_Do not be afraid_.

"We'll make it," Bulma told him, and she watched as Vegeta and Serori stared at each other for a long beat.

"We'll make it," Serori repeated, low and firm, and Bulma's heart pounded against the cage of her ribs. She pushed Gohan in front of her towards the door, towards Vegeta and Serori who were moving out into the hallway. She passed the table by the door and the flash of light off of the firestone necklace King Roqq had given her as a wedding gift caught her eye. She'd worn it for dinner and now she paused, staring at it—"Bulma," Vegeta urged—and snatched it up. As they ran down the hall, swept along with other Saiyans and occupants of the hotel, she wrapped it around her neck, awkwardly clasping it and tucking it beneath her shirt.

Outside, explosions boomed and fires lit up the night sky. Serori and Vegeta hustled Bulma and Gohan to a street corner and pushed them up against the exterior wall of a shop. Saiyans were in flight, battling in the air with members of Frieza's army, keeping them a decent distance from the hotel. Bulma saw Daikon, Radditz, and Nappa shouting orders at their squadrons, and Parseri flash-stepped across the street to meet them.

"We're trying to maintain a perimeter—" she screamed, her voice already hoarse.

"No," Vegeta shouted back, and pointed into the fray of the fighting. "Establish a corridor to the shuttlepads. We need to get out of here."

Gohan was crying, and from the corner of her eye, Bulma saw Goku battling alongside other members of Parseri's squadron. He was focused, intent on his job, and Bulma swore to herself that she was going to get Gohan out of here for him.

Parseri shouted into her scanner, and within seconds, Bulma saw the shift in tactics as fighters pushed forward and began a battle of pure attrition, fighting forward for every inch of ground they could gain. The Saiyans were strong, and even though Frieza had caught them off-guard and flooded the city with enough soldiers to easily outnumber the Saiyans, with every passing moment they became more orderly, more precise, more effective. A bulge formed up, pushing down the main street, clearing a path. Frieza's soldiers seemed to notice what the plan was, and tried to move themselves into blocking position.

Vegeta stared at the battle taking place before them, and Bulma could see what he saw—his men and women locked in a literal fight to the death. She looked beyond that though, through the fighting, to see an empty shuttle pad with no more incoming ships.

_Do not be afraid_.

When he finally turned to look at her, she met his gaze steadily. Bulma spoke before he did. "I need to get down there before you do. If Frieza has half a brain he'll have location transmitters on those shuttles."

Vegeta nodded and looked at Serori and Parseri. "You know what to do," he told them. He looked at Bulma again, his dark eyes running over her face, lit up by the flashes of ki blasts and the warm, flickering light emitted by the torched buildings. Then, in the blink of an eye, he was gone, off to fight alongside the other Saiyans. Bulma drew a shuddering breath and shook her head to clear it.

Serori reached up and pressed the side of her scouter. "This is Serori. Operation Omega. I repeat, Operation Omega. This is not a drill—I have the ball."

There was a shifting in the front lines, and Parseri nudged Bulma. "Pass me the brat, Princess."

It was the first time a Saiyan had ever really touched Gohan, and to pick him up meant that they were about to _move_. Kabocha was the first to touch down, followed only seconds later by at least twenty-five Saiyans that Bulma had passed by in the hallway hundreds of times and who had never given her a second look.

"It's the Princess?" Kabocha asked, and with a single nod from Parseri, he swung her up onto his back. "Hold on. Mizuna, cover my back."

"Shuttlepad—side streets only—stay low," Serori ordered. Bulma wrapped her arms around Kabocha's thick neck, and she felt his muscles bunch and then they were off, zipping through the narrow alleyways of Lulani. Ahead of them, Serori and a few others cleared the way for the group by knocking down and incinerating stray soldiers sent by Frieza. The wind stung Bulma's eyes, and as the group whipped around another corner, losing one of the Saiyans to a ki blast but not slowing in the slightest, the falling debris came too close to her head and she finally turned her head down into Kabocha's neck.

All she heard was screaming and the _zinging_ of fired ki blasts, the crumble of buildings, the clash of soldiers from close and far away. Kabocha's body was tense under hers, moving with precision and such extreme power. They were getting closer, because the fighting seemed to be more or less behind her shoulder, and she raised her head just in time to see a flash of light and feel Kabocha convulse. He tumbled to the ground, his body rolling on top of hers and pushing the air out of her lungs.

"Fuck," he wheezed, and Bulma felt a hot wetness seep through her clothes.

"Kabocha," she called out in alarm. "Where are you hit? Where?" But he continued to shake and mutter nonsense profanity into the air.

Parseri screamed her brother's name and her face appeared above the two of them. She had Gohan tucked under her arm, and her eyes raked over her brother's body frantically. Two more Saiyans appeared and quickly rolled him off of Bulma. Blood covered her body, plastering her clothes to her skin, and she saw that he'd been shot through the shoulder and stomach. A fine sheen of sweat was breaking out over his face, and his grey eyes began to drift shut.

_Do not be afraid._

"We have to _go,_" Serori shouted at them, and went to grab Bulma's arm.

"Bring him!" Bulma called out, and when Serori's face shuttered, Bulma shook her head. "He's Parseri's brother and he got me this far and I'm not going to leave him to bleed out in the middle of the road!"

Kobocha coughed behind them. "Go. Get her offa here."

Bulma looked around, scanning the line of the buildings around them. "Look—the lights of the shuttlepad are _right there_."

"Fine! You—carry him," Serori ordered, and a burly man with brown hair tied at the nape of his neck hauled Kabocha up onto his shoulder. Kabocha groaned, but didn't protest, and when they reached the shuttlepad minutes later and clambered aboard the first shuttle, he was immediately deposited onto a windowseat. Bulma rushed to the cockpit with Serori close on her heels and dropped to her knees.

"I need to get into the wiring," Bulma said, and Serori knelt down beside her and yanked the bottom sheet of metal that enclosed the control panel clear off. Wires crisscrossed every which way, and Bulma made quick work of figuring out what went where.

Serori peeked inside and watched Bulma's fingers flit along the lengths of wires. "What are you looking for?" She asked.

"Whatever transmits the signal of the location of the ship back to Frieza. Ah, here it is," Bulma said through clenched teeth, and yanked the purple wire clear out of the panel. "Please tell me you all know how to fly these things."

"Most of us do," Serori answered.

Bulma walked out of the cockpit and glanced out the door of the shuttle. The Saiyans were making great progress, it looked like, so they would have to move fast before Frieza's men splintered off more than they had already. Activity on the shuttlepad would only draw attention, so Bulma cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted: "Hey!" The twenty or so Saiyans twisted to look at her, except Kabocha, whose eyes were shut and whose skin was turning gray. "If you can fly a shuttle at subluminal speed, I need to you go to the other shuttles, open the bottom hatch of the control panel, and yank this wire out." She lifted up the wire above her head and the Saiyans squinted at it. "See how narrow it is? It's about…half as long as your tail, a dark purple, and is going to be on the left side of the panel, near the front. Do you understand? This _has_ to come out—it'll keep Frieza from tracking the ships. When your shuttles are full, _leave_."

Five Saiyans burst out of the shuttle, firing ki blasts to clear their way to remaining the shuttles. Another woman stuck her head out of the door and shouted that they needed to get the _fuck_ outta here. Bulma let Serori push past her and into the cockpit. Bulma heard the door to the outside slide shut, the hiss of the repressurization, and when the shuttle finally lifted off of the ground, she slumped against the wall of the shuttle.

Outside, as the shuttle eased into the air, Bulma could see the orbs of light that exploding ki created, and the final push of the Saiyans, their numbers thinned somewhat, towards the shuttlepad. Another hundred yards and they would be there. The hum of the engine picked up, and Bulma knew that Serori was about to take them subluminal. The space around the shuttle began to warp and distend, and Bulma watched as Frieza's soldiers, now pinpricks against the ground, realized that the shuttles were already warming up and splintered into unorganized factions, trying to simultaneously fight off the Saiyan front and keep the shuttles on the ground.

Then space popped and everything was quiet. The scene outside the window had turned into the long ribbons of light that Bulma was used to seeing on Frieza's ship. Inside, just over a dozen Saiyans sat quietly, their eyes on her, except for Parseri, who sat by Kabocha's side and pressed down on his wounds. Gohan's sniffles had died down, and he had curled himself up in his seat and pressed his eyes to his knees.

Bulma's boots tapped against the hard floor of the shuttle's interior as she walked back into the cockpit. Serori was still at the control panel, presumably charting a course. Bulma lowered herself into the second seat and leaned back to watch Serori work.

"Did they get out?" Serori asked with a tight voice.

Bulma shook her head. "I don't know. They seemed to be getting there." Serori nodded and leaned back as well, flattening her palms on her thighs.

"We barely made it ourselves. If not for Weila—" Serori cut herself off with a shake of her head. "Gods. Weila probably saved all of us and she's…dead. Or as good as it, unless she was able to get out like I told her to."

Bulma twisted to look at Serori. "What do you mean?"

Serori rolled her head against the headrest to look at Bulma. "Weila is a servant—usually in the lower levels. But with so many on Lulani…she was in Zarbon's rooms, cleaning while he and Frieza ate. She said that scientist, Orja, came in with some papers and showed them to Frieza. He told Zarbon to send five hundred soldiers to Lulani to—kill you and the rest of us. When she called me—" Serori's voice was starting to shake "—she said that they had already pulled Nappa's squadron out of their rooms on the ship and were executing them in the hallways. I told her to get out. Find a space pod, anything, go anywhere. Maybe she was lucky, like us."

Bulma's heart froze and she felt like she was going to throw up. Orja had betrayed her—not only hacked her hacking, but had gone straight to Frieza. How could she be surprised though? After what Frieza had done to the both of them after Gohan had been brought back? And Nappa's squadron—so many Saiyans, gone in a matter of minutes. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

_Do not be afraid_.

"Why you?" Serori asked. "Weila said that Frieza kept saying that _you_ had to be killed."

_Do not be afraid_.

In this moment, Bulma wanted more than anything for Vegeta to be there with them. For all she knew, he was dead, or mortally injured, or she would never see him again. She shivered and thought of everything that had brought them to this moment in time—the first time his eyes had settled on her, the tremor in her hand as she had taken his in their mockery of a marriage ceremony before Frieza, the warmth of his body next to hers in bed even before Roqq, when she had forced his cards and they'd fallen into each other like starving animals, the sight of his worried face through the glass and liquid of the regeneration tank, even the most basic flesh memories of skin against skin, the reassuring press of his lips against her neck, the way his hands had always tugged her close, _closer_, like he wanted the two of them to slide together into a single space, all whirling together until the moment she realized something had been missing and the clock had become important, and began counting time against her.

_Do not be afraid._

Bulma flattened her hands against her stomach and looked down at the slightest curve that they made.

"I'm pregnant."

_You will be lost, Princess, but do not wander._

* * *

><p>END OF PART ONE.<p>

Please let me know what you think! And follow me on tumblr, if you'd like-my handle is labonsoirfemme and I mostly reblog gifs/photosets/quotes from my fandoms and writing in general but I also talk about my fics, post them there, and have an ask box! If you've ever gotten a reply to a review from me, you know that I love to talk to y'all.


	11. Chapter 11

Okay, I'm reeeeeally sorry this took so long and that some of you who have me on author alert may have been spammed with my other fandoms. To be honest, I got a little overwhelmed with what's coming in this fic, and it took me actually physically sitting down and outlining to get to the point where I could handle it, and I think you'll see why by the end of the chapter.

Anyway, this one is heavy. As much as I hate to spoil anything before reading, I do want to warn for death. Not that this should surprise anyone following last chapter and basically the whole tone of this story, but I know that some people want to be warned about that.

* * *

><p>BEGINNING OF PART TWO.<p>

* * *

><p>The quiet woke him.<p>

That, and the waves of aches and throbs all over his body, but before Vegeta even twitched a finger in wakefulness, he knew that some sort of important piece of _something_ was missing. He could still taste the smoke in the back of his throat, and his eyes burned from the sting of it, too. Where had he been again?

_Lulani_.

_Frieza._

_Bulma_.

He shot upwards, ignoring the screaming of his ribs, and squinted against the sterile white light of the shuttle to look around him. He had been laid out on a bench in the main seating area, and he was alone. There had only been a handful of shuttles – what, a half-dozen? – and the only other rooms on this model wouldn't hold more than ten bodies at a time, and that was pushing it.

_Where are my men?_

Vegeta limped to the cockpit, only to find it empty. Someone had laid a course, but warning lights flickered across the switchboard. Whether or not they'd make it to the end on the line was doubtful.

"Oh, good. You're up."

Turning around slowly on his good leg, Vegeta had enough time to recognize that the cheerfulness in the voice behind him could only belong to one person.

"Where the hell is everyone?" Vegeta asked Kakarott, casting his eyes over the other man's destroyed clothes and battered body. The two of them had taken the piss out of each other on more than one occasion, but Kakarott had never looked this bad. Hell, Vegeta had never _felt_ this bad, and he knew that Kakarott had never pulled a punch. (Except that one time with Parseri, and he'd never made that mistake again.)

Goku looked over his shoulder at the empty seating area and shrugged. "We were the last ones. You don't remember?"

Vegeta opened his mouth to respond that _of course he fucking remembered_ but – wait – _did he_?

They'd been pushing down the main boulevard towards the shuttles with a solid line, pushing Frieza's soldiers back and away with the precision and efficiency that had garnered them the top spot in Frieza's army. He'd heard ki blasts in the alleys behind Frieza's line, but Serori and Parseri's group had gone radio silent. Until they broke it, he had to assume that his soldiers were carrying out their mission well.

He'd gotten separated from Nappa when a group of Tungas had taken advantage of a weak spot in the Saiyan front. Two Saiyans had been shot down, and the Tungas had pushed through the opening and spread out before it was filled. And then…?

Kakarott was frowning at him. "You took a pretty hard hit to the head," he said, and Vegeta lifted his hand to prod at the sore spot on his scalp. His fingers came away bloody. No wonder he had a fucking terrible headache. "Nappa and I came back for you, but this was the very last shuttle. Everyone else had gone on the bigger ones that were already powered up. You needed a bit of help, but you walked in just fine. You'll probably remember later on," Kakarott finished in a rush, shrugging his shoulders and hissing when he pulled something.

"Nappa charted the course?" Vegeta asked, gesturing as well as he could to the cockpit behind him with his fucked elbow, and Kakarott nodded. "Where is he?"

Kakarott's cheerful face shuttered and he glanced over his shoulder at the hallway that led to the private rooms. "You should come see him. I—He's…not doing good."

Fighting back a sudden wave of nausea, Vegeta shoved away from the wall and limped towards Kakarott. "Just now bothering to mention this, imbecile?" he tried to hiss, but it fell flat. Between his pounding head and his rolling stomach, he was having trouble rallying the caustic ire that kept his men in line. Kakarott reached out his arm in an offer to bear some of Vegeta's weight, but the prince smacked his hand away and braced himself on the wall instead. _I'd have to be half-dead before I'd let this buffoon carry me_, he thought, following said buffoon down the short hallway with halting steps.

The shuttles his men had been fighting towards had been four times this size – able to carry between seventy and one hundred bodies without too much strain on the subluminal generators and outfitted with several sleeping quarters and storage spaces. This model, though, designed to be manned by only a pilot, engineer, and attendant, boasted only two sleeping quarters and a single head. Kakarott jerked his head at one of the doors, but Vegeta didn't even need that indication.

He could smell the blood.

And for some reason, he couldn't seem to move. The edges of his vision blurred, like the air over a ship's boilers, forming a weird halo in the space around the notch in the door that served as its handle, and a cold numbness set in at the base of his head and dripped down over his shoulders and along his spine. _Move, _he told his feet, but they didn't heed him. The iron in the air seemed to coat the inside of his nose and bleed into his mouth and over his tongue.

The two of them stood in silence for a long moment, Vegeta staring at the door between him and Nappa, and Kakarott staring at Vegeta. Finally, Kakarott sucked in a breath and hooked his fingers in the door's handle. It slid open easily, not rattling in the slightest as it ran along its track. "Heya, Nappa," he sing-songed, in a voice much lighter and airier than the one he'd used only a moment before.

_He's…not doing good._

"Fuck off," Nappa snarled from inside, and the brusque and _normal_ tone jarred Vegeta out of his immobilizing stupor. A single step brought him inside the casement and into Nappa's line of sight. "Oh, thank the Gods. Get the hell out of here, Kakarott. If I'm gonna die, it's not going to be while listening to another one of your fish stories."

Kakarott gaped at the big man laid out on the bed, his face falling in despair. "Whaaaat? You didn't even like the one where I had to fight off the river dragon?"

Nappa scoffed, the sound catching in his throat in a sickly gargle, and Vegeta's stomach turned over again. "Any warrior worth his salt would've shot the thing to kingdom come before it got close enough to be a challenge for his catch. Now—piss off and let the grown ups talk."

Kakarott huffed and, instead of leaving straight away like he should have with that order from a superior officer, stepped close to the bed and crossed his arms. "It's a shame you and I never went fishing together. I think you could have taught me a thing or two." Vegeta couldn't see Kakarott's face, but Nappa's settled into a resigned smirk at Kakarott's words. He held out his hand, and Kakarott gripped it with his own, firm and strong, giving it a single shake. Kakarott's shoulders lifted with an inhale, like he was about to say something else, but he chose to let it out and released Nappa's hand.

"Close the door," Nappa told him in a gruff voice, as soon as Kakarott had left. "And don't lollygag over there in the corner like you're a brat again and scared of me. If I have to keep screaming like this, I'm gonna bleed out even faster and I've got some shit to say to you."

Vegeta pulled the door shut and dragged a chair over from the corner of the small room. It was a desk chair, the type that swivels, and Vegeta winced as it creaked under his weight. Nappa was a behemoth on the mattress—feet jutting out over the edge of it and head nearly the size of the pillows it sat on. His armor lay cracked and shattered in the corner, and the whole left side of his jumpsuit had been shredded, along with the skin and viscera underneath. Vegeta couldn't tear his eyes away from it, even as his throat squeezed and his stomach turned over.

"Hurts like a bitch," Nappa growled, and Vegeta finally looked up to meet his eyes. "My armor held it all in, but as soon as I started to pull it off, I knew I was a goner. Just time now, and not much of it. Thank the gods I knew we were the last out—I'd hate to die thinking we'd left men behind."

"Do you think that your squad made it off ship?" Vegeta asked, far quieter than he was used to talking, and Nappa shook his head.

"Maybe one or two, if that. They won't go down without a fight, though, not my boys and girls," Nappa tells him with a bloody grin. "Radditz, too. He took shots to both legs and was fighting from the ground before they finally got him. Right in the chest, too—quick. Fell right back on that prissy hair he'd cared so much about. At least they didn't take that from him on his way out."

Vegeta closed his eyes, barely feeling the tears that spilled over his cheeks. "Don't cry," Nappa told him, but Vegeta couldn't stop, only drop his face into his hand to hide it from Nappa. He'd done the same thing as a boy, back when the pains of training hadn't been a sweet burn, but a true ache unfathomable to a child. "It's a good death, my Prince. A good death. I died in service to my own lord, and not some as some lizard's leashed dog." Nappa closed his own eyes and sighed. "Do you remember your mother at all? She died when you were young but maybe…she used to sing to you when you wouldn't sleep. The prettiest voice I've ever heard."

There was something there, niggling at the back of his mind. Half a note, the whisper of a tune. Even in his dream, that damned recurring dream, he wasn't sure if his mother's voice was really his mother's voice, or just another woman's that his brain used by proxy. This voice was higher, thinner, maybe. "She was from the lakes," he said instead, swiping at his damp cheeks.

"She was. Damned beautiful for it, too, and your father once joked that he didn't marry her just to have a brat that looked just like him. Everything about you is your father but your black hair and the shape of your mouth. Maybe you have her voice, too. Never heard you sing, though." Nappa hummed a little under his breath, and yes, the tune sounded familiar. "She told me to take care of you. It was my job, of course, but she asked me to, when everything started going to shit."

"And you agreed."

"Of course. Who could have said no to a pretty face like that?" Nappa joked, and Vegeta's mouth twitched upwards. "I've brought you this far, and I haven't failed her, or your father. You're a free man, now, my prince. We all are. Free."

Vegeta should have felt happy, even elated. This was the realization of all of his dreams—breaking the shackles of Frieza's grip over his people, escaping beyond his reach, beginning their lives anew—but all he felt was an overwhelming sense of dread and confusion. "I don't know what to do next," he admitted, shame creeping up his spine when his eyes started to burn again.

"Yeah, y'do," Nappa reassured him, his voice starting to slur. Vegeta knew he didn't have long. "You're just scared. That's alright. You aren't alone. You've got Kakarott and…there's something about him. Don't underestimate him, not for a minute. But we aren't all soldiers, y'know. Defectors. Every group has 'em. They'll tell you where to go, where t'find the others. You've gotta find the others. Listen," Nappa said, swallowing heavily. "You've grown up so well. You're like my own son. It's what my family does, raises the royal brats like our own children but…I never had any sons but you. Just wish…I'd seen you with brats'a your own."

Vegeta saw the light fading in Nappa's eyes and decided to tell him his suspicions as if they were the truth. He was dying an agonizing death, and if this was his only regret in life… "Bulma's pregnant, Nappa."

After a long blink, Nappa's mouth ever so slightly turned up at the corners, where blood leaked out slowly. "Frieza's a fragile little bitch, ain't he?" His breath was coming in shorter, shallower rattles, and his fingers twitched towards Vegeta. Kakarott had shaken his hand, hadn't he? And Nappa deserved more than bleeding out with Vegeta just staring because he wasn't ready to let Nappa go.

So he crossed to Nappa's side and picked up his guard's hand and gripped it in his own. Once, Vegeta had been small enough that Nappa had been able to carry him with one arm, and when he'd been learning to fly, Nappa had swung him into the sky with these very hands. "Don't worry about me, boy," Nappa murmured, his eyes closing and his brow smoothing out, "I'm off to see your parents."

One long exhale, like a well-rested sigh, and Nappa was gone.

* * *

><p>When Vegeta finally left the room, closing the door behind him with a click, he found Kakarott leaning against the wall a little bit down the corridor. The man's usual clownish expression had been replaced with a serious one for once, and Vegeta waited for him to do something ridiculous like attempt to embrace him or make comments about the dried salt on Vegeta's cheeks, but Kakarott did neither. "Radditz is dead," Vegeta told him in a hoarse voice.<p>

"I know."

"You saw it, then?" Vegeta asked, limping back down the corridor and into the main bay of the shuttle.

Kakarott hesitated behind him, and then admitted, "No, but I felt it. It was quick."

Vegeta collapsed onto a bench and fixed Kakarott with a piercing stare. "That's what Nappa said, but he _saw_ it," he said, and Kakarott pulled his mouth to one side and scratched the back of his head.

"I don't … need scouters like the rest of you do," Kakarott started to explain, sitting down on the bench across from Vegeta. "Back on Earth, this guy named Popo taught me and my friends how to pick up on everyone's different ki signatures. Scouters are awesome because they can tell you how strong your opponent is, but I can find people or know if someone is coming or going without it. When I first felt Gohan's again, I thought I was going crazy," he muttered, looking down at his hands. "But it's how I found you, afterwards. Nappa was screaming for you and everything was just a mess. You were knocked right out, but everyone else left behind was dead or dying, so…I was able to find you."

Vegeta wanted to grab Kakarott but the front of his jumpsuit and pound his fist into his face for not telling any of them about this, but he was far too tired and he was pretty sure he needed Kakarott to be not dead or close to dead for as long as possible. Nappa had said to not underestimate him, and, well, it's bad luck to shit on the advice of the dead. Particularly when the dead's advice had served him well over the past two and a half decades. So Vegeta closed his eyes and tilted his head back and said: "Once we sleep and eat, you're going to teach that to me."

* * *

><p>When Serori's eyes widened and her lips parted, Bulma held out her hand to quiet whatever might have come flying out. She looked over her shoulder, through the door to where the rest of the Saiyans milled around and talked amongst themselves. No one else seemed to have heard her tell Serori that she was pregnant, but she still lowered her voice and said, "You can't tell anyone."<p>

Serori stared at Bulma's stomach and wiped at her eyes. "That's why, then," she muttered. "Gods, I should have known—"

"Known what?"

"Vegeta," Serori said with a shrug. "After Roqq, he had me and Parseri come up with a carry-the-ball plan, but he didn't tell us who it was for. He didn't want to know any details about it, but he said that we should plan for any environment and the end goal was _always_ to get the ball out—off ship, off planet, wherever we were. I thought it might have been for him, or for Nappa, I don't know. Sometimes he just gives us plans to keep us sharp. But this one he wanted us to drill, too, so that's how I knew it was real. I eventually figured out that it was for you, though. You're too weak to handle yourself—you'd never get out on your own."

"Hey. I just made sure that we wouldn't be tracked leaving Lulani," Bulma cut in with a frown and Serori nodded, conceding the point.

"True. But you wouldn't have made it to the shuttlepad without us, right? Anyway, until Gohan, I had no idea why Vegeta would want to get you out, but…it makes sense. You're carrying his child." Serori stopped and pressed her fingers to her lips. "His heir."

Bulma sighed and pushed her hair out of her face. "It probably won't take, so don't tell anyone."

"How could you know?"

Bulma pulled her mouth to one side and stared down at her stomach. "I've had four miscarriages," she said in a low voice. "I was with someone…his name was Yamcha. I met him when I was a teenager. The first one was a relief, actually. I was only eighteen and was about to start my dissertation for my doctorate in biomolecular engineering and I had thought, how the hell am I going to do this with a kid and a boyfriend who _actually_ lives in the desert? But then we actually started trying and…eventually just accepted that it wasn't going to happen. I just count myself lucky that I haven't had any stillbirths—where the baby is born, but dead—and that my body gets rid of them early. It's easy to not…get attached that way."

Serori was looking at her with some mix of confusion and sadness, and Bulma remembered that the Saiyan's hadn't been able to reproduce for a long time. Perhaps some of the older Saiyans knew what she was going through, but Serori wasn't one of them. Still, Bulma thought that if it were the nature of the Saiyans, Serori would have taken her hand in comfort. But instead, Serori asked quietly, "How long have you been pregnant?"

"About nine or ten weeks. A human pregnancy runs for about 40 weeks, give or take." Bulma drummed her fingers on the slightest rise of her tummy, barely palpable under her naval. "Three of them went in the first twelve, but my third…I lost her at sixteen weeks. So. We'll see. I just…don't think it's a good idea to say anything. Not until we…know. One way or another. Anyway," Bulma said, pushed herself out of her seat with a deep inhale, "I need to go take care of—"

She stopped short at the sight of Parseri standing right inside the doorway. The shorter woman's eyes dropped down to her stomach, and then back up, and her lips thinned into a hard line. Bulma opened her mouth, but Parseri rolled her eyes and made the motion of zipping her lips. "I know a fucking secret conversation when I hear one," she told Bulma with an arched brow. "But you need to come put your doctor fingers to use on my brother."

"I was just coming to do that," Bulma nodded, and followed Parseri out into the main seating area. "I need any first aid supplies that we have here."

"Nasu—you heard her," Parseri shouted, and a whippet-thin (by Saiyan standards, at least) male jumped out of his seat against the back wall and disappeared down the back hallway. "And you, Okura, go with him." The woman, perfectly nondescript in a sea of Saiyans save for the long red braid she wore down her back, followed suit.

Kabocha lay on a wide window seat, shaking now and again. His grey eyes blearily followed her as she approached and leaned over him to take in his wounds. The shot in his shoulder had missed an artery, but it was still oozing pretty badly through his thin sleeping shirt. She couldn't see the stomach wound that well, though, because he'd thrown his armor on over his shirt. It seemed low enough… "I need to get this off him," she told Parseri, resting her fingers on the single arm guard.

The armor unclicked at the shoulders and sides, and Parseri eased it off of his front. Kabocha hissed and clenched his teeth when it pulled away from his raw skin, but he didn't pass out or scream. Bulma ripped his shirt open up the middle and told him to brace himself before she poked at the edges the hole. It didn't smell like his bowel was opened, and she did her best to look inside under the overhead lights, but finally she sat back on her heels and looked up at Parseri with a frown. "I don't know. I don't have any equipment here—I don't even have proper lighting or even gloves," she said, gesturing at the first aid kits that Nasu and Okura had brought back from the back of the shuttle. "And I'm not about to do any exploration on him without that or even…alcohol for sterilization."

"So, what, sew him up and hope for the best?" Parseri asked, chewing on her lip, and Bulma shrugged.

"Yeah. We have some antibiotics that we can give him and we'll keep it wrapped well. You all heal _way_ faster than humans do so it'll actually be easier to see how he's doing, probably even within the next few days. I think as long as he doesn't get infected, his body will do the rest. I have seen…far worse than this come through the lab. It's actually kind of weird." Bulma said the last bit under her breath, but she knows that Kabocha heard her, because of the way his lips twitched even though his eyes were closed.

It took a group of them to pull Kabocha into a sitting position and tug the rest of his armor and shirt off. Gohan sat in front of the open first aid kits and passed Bulma what she needed, as long as she was clear enough about what exactly she was talking about. When he was cleaned stitched and wrapped up, they lowered him back down onto the window seat because Bulma didn't want to move him quite yet.

"You'll see," Kabocha croaked, catching the end of Okura's braid and tugging lightly on it, "I'll be back on my feet in no time. And then you can put me on my back again." He finished with a slow wink, and Okura rolled her eyes and swatted at his hand.

"Open wounds and oozing blood are what I've always looked for in a man," Okura quipped, flipping her braid over her shoulder.

"See? I'm perfect for ya," Kabocha called at her back, even as she walked away without a backwards glance.

In the brief lull that followed, Parseri leaned back against the wall and jerked her chin at Serori, who had finally left the cockpit to join everyone else. "So, where're we headed?"

A ghost of a smile flitted across Serori's lips, and she cocked an eyebrow. "Where all traitors and pirates go, of course. Ochend."

Next to Bulma, Nasu nodded slowly, baring his teeth. "Fuck. Yes."

"Well," Parseri laughs, "if we're gonna piss the PTO off, we might as well do it right."

* * *

><p>So, pacing and parallel storylines are clearly what was freaking me out. I think they will continue to freak me out.<p>

Please, let me know what you think so far! Come play with me on tumblr, too - my handle is labonsoirfemme, but I run a multifandom blog as you can probably tell by my author profile here on FF!


	12. Chapter 12

I'm not dead and this fic is not forgotten! I'm actually making it my priority to finish, so until it is done, it's at the front of my fic queue.

Enjoy!

* * *

><p>She'd been waiting for this ever since she'd gone aboard Frieza's ship. In fact, she thought that she might <em>never<em> get this opportunity. Bulma closed her eyes and gave a satisfied sigh.

"Well are you going to take the damned thing apart or what?" Parseri grumbled.

"Shh. I'm savoring the moment." Opening her eyes again, she picked up a screwdriver in her right hand and Parseri's scouter in her left. They'd found a small tool kit in the cockpit's closet and Bulma had immediately categorized and organized the tools on top of the dresser as best she could. The weight of hammers and screwdrivers and solderers in her palms had been almost as good as sex after _months_ of nothing but vials and wet mounts.

Finally, she set screwdriver to scouter. Piece by piece, it came apart under her fingers—the shell, the circuit boards, plugs and connective wires—until she found what she was looking for.

"The locating bug is soldered onto the motherboard," Bulma said after several minutes of constructive deconstruction. She lifted a circuit board so that Parseri could see and pointed to the little red locator chip. "I can't pull it like I did to the control panel downstairs. The whole board has to be destroyed."

Parseri snatched the green card and turned it over in her fingers. "And let me guess: the scouters won't operate without these boards." Bulma's mouth pulled to the side, giving Parseri her answer. "Fuckin' Frieza. Makes sense—he wouldn't want us using the damn things without him keeping tabs on us." She shook her head and crushed the circuit board in her fist. Under her strong fingers, it crackled, crunched, and ground to bits.

"They all need to go, Parseri." Bulma clambered off of the double bed and gathered up the remaining pieces of the scouter. "Every last one of them." She pulled open the top drawer of the dresser and dumped the spare pieces in. Useless as they were now, she might need them later.

With a sharp nod, Parseri left the room, leaving Bulma alone for the first time since they left Lulani. Bulma looked over at the clock above the bed. _Three hours._ Three hours since Serori set the coordinates for Ochend. Three hours since Kabocha's bleeding had stopped and Gohan had fallen asleep curled around Kabocha's head. _He's keeping my ears warm_, he'd grumbled at Bulma when she'd offered to move him.

After a few long moments of quiet, the silence became almost deafening. There was too much to be seen to before she could let herself rest. As she rocked forward onto her feet, however, the heavy necklace she wore under her shirt swung against her breast bone, reminding her of its presence. She should hide it — but where?

The bedroom was sparsely furnished and the floor and walls lacked any hidey holes for her to sneak it into. Thinking of how she kept her condoms hidden from her mother, Bulma looked for vents, but the air circulated into the room from the ceiling, not the walls or the floor.

Finally, Bulma's eyes landed on her bed. More specifically, the crevice where mattress met boxspring. "There's no reason for them to go snooping about anyway," she told herself, and unclasped the necklace.

* * *

><p>With the necklace suitably stowed away, Bulma slid the door open and stepped out into the hallway of the upper deck. She retraced her steps down long, door-lined hallway, the open stairwell, and the lower hallway before she emerged in the large, open seating bay of the shuttle. It reminded Bulma of a roomier aircraft carrier, the way the seats were lined up in pairs, but no aircraft carrier on earth had such large picture windows along the sides of the fuselage, and certainly not with padded benches underneath.<p>

Parseri and the braided soldier, Okura, were crunching the earpieces of the scouters in their hands and under their heels as quickly as they could. Bulma swiveled her head to take in the sight before her; she could practically _feel_ the exhaustion rolling off of the group of soldiers slumped and slouching in reclined seats and across the window benches. Kabocha looked peaceful in his sleep, but he startled awake with a half-shout when Bulma laid her palm on his stomach wound. Above Kabocha's head, Gohan babbled in his sleep.

"It's just me," she whispered, eyes sliding away from the slumbering half-Saiyan, and ever-so-delicately rolled up the layered gauze until she saw the tender and ragged edge of his wound. His muscles trembled and his fists clenched with the pressure and the shifting of the cloth against the raw flesh, but Kabocha held back any more sounds behind his clenched teeth. It would have been ridiculous to look for an infection so early in a human, but she'd seen wounds turn septic in the space of an afternoon in the lab. Aliens were…well, alien.

"Warn a man, next time," he grumbled, voice quivering. Bulma had treated enough Saiyans on Frieza's ship to know better than to ask whether he wanted any pain medication. Instead, she simply reached into the first-aid kit tucked between Kabocha's thigh and the window, picked out a clean syringe and a green serum, and popped his shoulder with a fresh dose of the anesthetic.

He heaved a grateful sigh as Bulma drew the needle from his arm. "Let that settle in for an hour or so," Bulma told him, "and we'll get you into a bed."

When Kabocha's eyes slid shut again, Bulma closed up the first-aid kit with a soft click. In the back of the seating bay, Okura and Parseri had finished their overzealous destruction and had started sweeping the remnants into a bag that Bulma was sure would be put out the airlock before the hour was out.

Serori was still seated in the cockpit, staring through the front window with a vacant stare and bloodshot eyes. Bulma racked her brain for the name _Weila_, but came up with nothing—not even a glimpse of a hair color or skin tone. Serori looked so drained, and Bulma considered leaving her alone for a bit longer. She even turned on her heel to find something else to do, but stopped when she saw the dirty and exhausted men and women spread across the seating bay. About half of them wore the black jumpsuits of Special Operations; they were Serori's responsibility.

_Work distracts a worried mind_, Bunny reminded her.

So, Bulma returned to the cockpit and laid a hand on Serori's shoulder. "Why haven't they slept or eaten yet?" Bulma asked.

"They're on duty." Serori's eyes seemed to peer right through Bulma even when she turned her face up to hers.

"Well," Bulma glanced at the clock on the control panel. _Six days, four hours, fifty-three minutes until we dock at Ochend_. "I think that if we were going to be blindsided by Frieza, it would have happened by now. We need to find rations and water, too."

Serori blinked and shook her head a bit to bring herself back into the present. "You're right," she said with a sigh. "And keeping them up won't help if something _does_ happen." Despite the screaming of her under-stretched and over-worked muscles, Serori hauled herself out of the pilot's chair and moved past Bulma into the seating bay.

At the clearing of Serori's throat, the lounging Saiyans snapped to attention. They planted their feet flat on the floor and turned their eyes to her with more energy than Bulma would have thought possible after the battle on Lulani. "First class, follow me," she ordered, voice sharp, and strode across the seating bay with quick steps.

Bulma bit the inside of her cheek to keep her smile to herself as she and a handful of soldiers followed Serori down the first-floor hallway. _Work_, she thought, _suits soldiers just as well as scientists_.

The first door that Serori opened led to a six-bed bedroom; its neighbor was what Serori had been looking for. The shuttle's head was utilitarian, but serviceable. Swinging doors separated four shower stalls from the rest of the room; three toilet stalls against the far wall vented into an external container that would be removed, emptied, and replaced while they docked; and across from the showers, a single long mirror hung above the long trough sink and its four faucets. Bulma didn't wait for Serori; she stepped into the bathroom and went straight to the line of cabinets along the wall beside the door.

"Looks like towels and soap are in here," she informed them. And — "Laundry? I think that's what this is." The machinery looked like the front-loading machines in Earthling laundromats, but larger, and with fewer cycle options. _Of course_, Bulma sighed. _No respect for proper garment care._

A second head lay directly across the hallway, the layout mirror-imaged. "Scrub that lizard scum off before the whole ship gets rank. And don't waste all the hot water!" Serori shouted, and the soldiers scrambled towards the showers, stripping their clothes haphazardly as they went.

The remaining empty shower stalls went to the first few second-class soldiers that jumped to their feet at Serori's announcement; the rest would have to proceed by class as the stalls emptied.

The first floor alone could sleep sixteen people. In each of the front two bedrooms, three sets of curtained bunkbeds made rough horse-shoe shapes around central tables. At the back of the ship, next to the spiral staircase, a third bedroom had only two sets of bunk beds, and the communal table was pushed under a small window much like a bar. Across from that window lay a large storage room, which was the object of Bulma and Serori's search.

Bulma had already been upstairs with Parseri, when the other woman had done her sweep of the ship. The bedroom that she had just come from lay at the front of the ship over the seating bay and was as wide as the fuselage itself. _Shuttle captains' quarters_, Parseri had said. _You and the brat should be fine in here_. The other bedrooms each hosted single beds and individual desks. Bulma was sure that the two captains and Kabocha would each be claiming one of those rooms. The heads upstairs were less utilitarian than those down stairs, but Bulma had wisely kept that to herself.

With a shake of her head, Bulma returned her focus to the storage room.

Serori entered first and flicked on the light. "Oh, thank the gods," Serori muttered when she saw the fully-stocked shelves. "We'll live after all."

* * *

><p>Showers, clean jumpsuits, a square meal, and a good night's sleep did wonders in taking the edge off. With her nose buried in Gohan's soap-fresh hair and his soft snores filling her ears, Bulma slept like the dead upstairs. Downstairs, the Saiyans took advantage of the lack of a normal wake up time, fighting their way through the curtains of their bunks a solid ten to eleven hours after falling into bed, blinking owlishly into the overhead lights and clutching at their growling stomachs. They'd divided themselves among the bedrooms according to class, and Bulma used this as her starting point for learning about her new housemates. In all of her months on Frieza's ship and she'd only really talked to the captains and the Saiyans that crossed through the lab. Being around them made her realize how…sheltered? secluded? No. Bulma settled on "separated." She'd been "separated" from the general population, as it were.<p>

Excluding Serori, Parseri, and Kabocha, who'd claimed the upstairs rooms, the three first class soldiers had taken the back bunk room with the four beds. Enoki and Natto were Serori's soldiers, two men from the same mountainous region from which Serori herself hailed. Gruff and silent and dark and _always_ together, Bulma could only tell them apart by the heavy scarring that Natto bore on his left cheek from a blast he took on a purge that shattered his scouter. Left stranded for days, the skin had already started to granulate and scar by the time the recovery team found him and dropped him into a regeneration tank. The third, Norritz, was Parseri's girl, a chatty, petite thing with wild brown hair that she left hanging loose around her shoulders. Bulma had been nearly fooled by her bubbly personality until Nasu, one of Parseri's third-class soldiers, had attempted to sneak one of Norritz's grain cakes and Norritz gave him a right hook to his temple so sound that Bulma was worried that he'd gotten a concussion.

"No fighting," Bulma ordered after Nasu's eyes had finally come back into focus.

Norritz's normally-twinkling eyes gave a cool roll in their sockets. "Yes, Your Grace." The snark in her tone didn't bother Bulma, being aware as she was about the Saiyans' feelings towards her, and surely how they had to feel after the events of Lulani, but Parseri gave Norritz a firm, open-palmed slap across the face.

"You heard the princess. She's the doctor here. We've already dumped half of the first aid kit into that moron's torso, anyway." She jerked her head at Kabocha, who spent some of his days reclined in the seating bay instead of '_cooped up like a fattened hog_' in his bed upstairs.

The shuttle hosted seven third-class soldiers and five second-class soldiers, which had led to a bit of a sleeping arrangement scandal the first night. Bulma had torn a page out of the flight manual she'd found, had them write down their names, and used the empty first aid kid to shake and rattle the folded pieces of paper together. With Bulma holding the open tin over his head, Kobocha had reached up and plucked out the name of the third class who would bunk with the second class soldiers: Oocha.

That she was one of the oldest third-class soldiers, much less one of the oldest soldiers aboard, meant that no one really contested her bunking above her class. Threads of white and grey burst through her coppery hair, along with her pale northern skin and hazel eyes, giving her quite a distinct look. She told Bulma over dinner one night that her northern tribespeople had been ethnically separate from the "greenlanders" for over a millennia. She seemed calmer than the other Saiyans, eating quietly, and keeping to herself much of the time. According to Serori, this stillness, coupled with her unique features, made her one of the Special Operations' most successful covert agents.

"Hide her tail and braid her hair down and you'd never think she was a Saiyan," Serori smirked.

Slowly but surely, Bulma learned the names of all of the second- and third- class Saiyans. In second class, Okura and Nasu belonged to Parseri; Shoga, Butatz, and Dengatz to Serori. In addition to second-class-bunking Oocha, Fuki, Gabock, and Momo were all third-class soldiers belonging to Serori. Renko, Taren, and Waka were the three third-class soldiers commanded by Parseri.

All together, they made up the last fifteen members of Operation Omega.

* * *

><p>"Vegeta had us put a strike team together," Serori told Bulma one night over small cups of strong grain wine. "After Roqq."<p>

They were joined by Parseri and Kabocha at the small table in Serori's room after dinner. Directly under Serori's floor, muffled voices rose above the running water in the showers. Everything in the Saiyan's lives was communal, Bulma had come to learn. A conversation could begin at the dinner table and seamlessly continue into the bathroom as the participants stripped and got into the showers. While taking food unasked was rude (as Norritz and Nasu had shown), so too was failing to offer to share a plate with one's neighbor.

"Roqq," Bulma repeated quietly. She swirled her wine in her cup and then drained it in one pull, giving a hearty cough at the sweet burn in her throat. Kabocha arched his brow at her (in judgment or in approval, she wasn't sure) and used his good hand to pour her another half-cup.

The riots seemed so long ago. Bulma hadn't thought about it…days? Weeks? She had even stopped noticing the scars on her cheek in the mirror — those faint white lines from a Roqqani woman's nails. She'd stopped having nightmares about the screaming, even.

Lulani occupied her recent nightmares, in any case.

Parseri took a sip and rolled the liquid around in her mouth. "He didn't tell us it was for you, though. He just wanted us to secretly put together a team that could get an object or person out of any situation at any time."

"We thought it was for Vegeta, or for you and for Vegeta." Serori rocked back in her chair, hooked her foot around the leg of the table to keep herself upright. "Although, after the brat and Frieza beating you senseless, I realized it had been for you the whole time."

Bulma scoffed. "That's ridiculous. At that time—" She snapped her mouth shut and cut her eyes at Kabocha, who was unsuspectingly pouring himself a fresh cup of wine. Parseri and Serori knew about Bulma's condition, of course, and were it any other secret, Bulma wouldn't even have had to guess as to whether or not Parseri had told her brother. But Kabocha hadn't shot even a single glance at Bulma's stomach over the past few days, so Bulma knew that Parseri had kept this secret to herself.

"After, though," Serori murmured, staring at the cup cradled in her lap. "In the regen tank…I've never seen him watch over someone the way he watched over you." Then she cleared her throat and let her chair drop back down onto the floor with a sharp thud. "Anyway — he wanted fewer than thirty soldiers whom we trusted completely and absolutely with our lives, and that's who you've got down there."

Kabocha chuckled and laid his forearms on his knees. His light grey eyes settled on Bulma with a wink. "They're a bunch of bitches and bastards down there, don't get us wrong. They'll pull your tail or kick you in the balls in a scrimmage if you let 'em—hells, Enoki even swiped a brothel woman from under my nose while we were on Lulani—but you're safe with us."

Bulma was overwhelmed with a sudden wave of relief and gratitude, but she knew that these soldiers were all but violently allergic to any sort of non-sexual physical affection. So with a wry smirk, Bulma instead reached out and tugged on a lock of Kabocha's hair. "All of your tales about your legendary exploits with women, Lieutenants, and grumpy old Enoki took your girl?"

Kabocha _tch_-ed and muttered under his breath about rich bastards and outbidding, leading Parseri to playfully punch his shoulder and tease him even further about his reputation.

No, Bulma saved all of her hugs and cuddles for warm little Gohan, who wiggled his way into her arms and under her chin every night without fail. Full of dinner and scrubbed clean, he curled himself up and drifted off into dreamland with an ease that Bulma envied. Only did his sleep-talking belie his comfort.

"Mama," he murmured, little face scrunched up. "Papa."

And Bulma would stroke his hair and turn to look out the window, watching the streamers of light pass them by on their way to Ochend. If she squinted her eyes, it was almost like being in bed on Frieza's ship, waiting for Vegeta to come to bed…

Now she was going to dream about him, Bulma thought with a yawn.

She always dreamed of him after thinking about him…

* * *

><p>With the lights out, he was just a black shape against the rainbow of streamers outside the window. It reminded her of the silhouette portraits she'd seen on earth. She reached out a hand and turned his head so that his face was in profile and hummed in satisfaction at the result.<p>

"What is it, woman?" he grumbled.

She propped her head up on her hand, saw the light reflecting in his black eyes slid sideways to watch her face. Lightly, she ran her finger down his forehead, between his eyebrows, along the slope of his straight nose, over his cupid's bow and lower lip, finally letting fingertip come to a rest on his chin. "Click." Her very own silhouette portrait.

He _harrumph_ed, as she knew he would, but still caught her wrist and kissed the center of her palm.

"I don't want to forget it."

"You never could forget it." She heard the smirk, saw the glint of his teeth.

"You have to find me before I forget. How will I tell the baby what you looked like if you don't find me?"

Pressed back into the pillow now, his finger tracing her face now. "Do I have to do everything, lazy woman? Use that brain of yours you always brag about. Find them, and I'll find you."

* * *

><p>Far away, Vegeta sat straight up in his narrow bed with a gasp, already shivering with a cold sweat.<p>

He threw out a hand and met only the corner of his mattress. She'd been there, just _there_, only a moment ago, hadn't she? He could still feel the bridge of her nose under the pad of his finger.

_Click_.

* * *

><p>Thanks for reading! We're headed to Ochend next chapter. :D<p> 


	13. Chapter 13

I PROMISED THIS FIC WAS MY PRIORITY, DIDN'T I?

That being said, this is a touch of a shorter chapter than normal. I'm in law school, finals and paper due dates are coming up in early december, but I wanted to get _something_ out to y'all before the break. Enjoy!

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><p>Vegeta and Goku's shuttle creaked and groaned as it plummeted towards the planet's surface. They'd not even entered the planet's atmosphere yet, but Vegeta felt the fuselage rumble under his hands at the control panel in the cockpit. Nearly every warning light on the panel was lit up, silently screaming "<em>You're fucked! You're fucked!<em>" to the passengers on the shuttle.

With a huff, Vegeta spun away from the panel and slammed the door to the cockpit. No need to go back in there, after all. On the floor in the seating bay, Goku did one-armed push ups, using the vibrations of the ship's death groans to test the stabilization ability of his abdominals.

"The landing gear's shot. We're gonna either crash into the surface or fall apart in the atmosphere." Vegeta frowned out the window, watching the curve of the planet grow larger and larger. As the planet's gravity grabbed a stronger hold of the shuttle, its sun began to slice across the window in wide, repetitive arcs.

Great. Now they were spinning, too.

The moment they hit the atmosphere, the impact was so jarring and the screech the shuttle let out so shrill that Vegeta was sure that it was going to shatter around them. It held though, seemingly by a thread (or wire), given the way it rattled in the agonizing minutes that followed.

Through the window, the clouds rose towards them, then ensconced the shuttle in their grey blindness, and then they were a heartbeat from a forest of purple rock spires.

Vegeta opened his mouth: "Oh, _FU—" _

The shuttle hit one of the rocky upshoots with a sickening thud and scream of rending metal. Vegeta and Goku slammed into the ceiling, now a wall, ricocheted through the gaping hole the impact tore through the fuselage, and began a free fall towards the ground. Stunned from the crash and confused by the tumbling and spinning his body was doing through the air, it took him a moment to get his bearings, right himself, and slow his descent. For his part, Goku had yet to really _master_ flying, so all he was able to do was jerkily stop himself, in varying ridiculous positions, over and over again.

"Kakarott! Use your ki!" Vegeta shouted, but all that resulted in was Goku blasting a ki burst from his feet while upside down, shooting him closer to the ground. Vegeta rolled his eyes. "Moron."

By then, Goku was too far down to catch by the scruff of his jumpsuit (not that Vegeta would have, but the principle stood), so Vegeta disinterestedly watched Goku rollick his way to the ground, where he landed with a solid thud and a plume of dust. He'd brushed himself off by the time Vegeta touched down, but his attention had already turned to something other than his fellow Saiyan. "People are out there," he muttered.

Sure enough, the back of Vegeta's mind tingled once he closed his eyes and reached out his senses like Goku had taught him over the past few days. Goku had told him that, with practice, he'd be able to pick out particular signatures, though Goku himself admitted to being able to distinguish only a few. (Which meant that Vegeta would have to distinguish _more_ than a few, when all of this was over and done with.)

They came out from behind rocks and shuffled forwards — little pink beings with bulbous, purple-freckled heads and fish-like faces.

"Hey, little guys!" Goku called out, raising a hand. "Can you tell us where we are?"

Frightened, the beings trilled in fear and waddled away to a safe distance on their two-toed feet.

Vegeta huffed and cracked his neck. "We're on Yardrat, you fool. Were you not listening earlier?"

"Oh, over breakfast? Sorry! I was eating."

At Goku's lackadaisical shrug, Vegeta took a deep, long inhale through his nose and pushed down the urge to give him a sound thrashing. All he wanted was stuff himself with proper food, sleep for twenty hours, and wake up on a completely different planet from the idiot standing next to him. And he wanted it _now_. His fingers twitched. He had half a mind to just start blasting the meek Yadrati to kingdom come, but…

Gods, he was _tired_. And the Yadrati looked like they barely had any flesh on their bones to start with and he didn't know which way the city was to find any proper food in case they tasted as terrible as they looked. Not to mention, he'd probably traumatize the third-class moron he'd been stuck with and the last thing he wanted was to deal with a brute his size in a vegetative state.

So, he huffed, clenched his teeth regain some patience, and crossed his arms over his chest to put the weaker beings at ease. "Our ship has crashed while escaping Frieza," he called out in Galactic Standard. "We require assistance."

Heads bobbing in understanding, a few Yadrati shuffled forward. "Are you hungry?"

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><p>"Docking sequence initiated." The notification came via a wireless signal inside the dock station and through the speakers inside the shuttle's cockpit.<p>

Serori tapped a few buttons and flipped the handle at the far left of the board that would release the docking hatches on the outside of the shuttle. "Affirmed. Lock pistons when ready." Mechanical arms reached out from the dock station and clamped their claws into the docking hatches, clicking into locked position and holding the shuttle in place. When the docking light turned from red to free, Serori pressed the shuttle intercom button. "We're docked. Get ready for atmospheric neutralization."

At the thumbs up from the operator on the other side of the dock's window, Serori disengaged the artificial gravity inside the shuttle. Instantly, she felt heavier, sitting more heavily in her seat, and regretted the extra portion she'd had at breakfast.

"Welcome to Ochend," the dock operator said, nodding at Serori through the windows, and Serori nodded back before leaving the cockpit.

Several of the Saiyans had gathered as ordered in the main seating bay and they looked ready to explode from pent-up energy. Bags stuffed full of odds and ends from about the ship sat around their feet. Unpalatable (to Saiyan tastes) canned food; excess shampoo, soap, and towels; sheets and blankets from the storage room; all of the spare jumpsuits and armor they'd found in drawers and closets; so on and so on. Only at Bulma's insistence had they not started unscrewing tables and pulling out the mattresses. _They'll short us on the purchase price if all of that stuff is gone!_ she'd reminded them, pulling them out of their credit-hungry daze.

"You can barter for clothing or supplies if you want," Serori reminded them as they picked up the bags and prepared to leave. "Just — don't be dumb, don't get shorted, and _don't_ get into fights. We've got to leave as soon as we can."

They saluted, Serori opened the doors to the dock, and then they were gone. Serori cast a glance upwards, towards Bulma's bedroom. As much as it made the hair on the back of Serori's neck stand up, Bulma was going to have to accompany Serori into Ochend's shipyard. According to her, she was a mechanical genius and insisted that they could get a lower-end ship because she could fix it up "in a jiffy." The thought of hanging out on Ochend for more than a few days made Serori nervous. It was an obvious place for traitors to run to. If it wasn't first on Frieza's list, it would be fairly soon after.

The woman in question bounded down the stairs a few moments later, dressed in a black jumpsuit to match Serori and her hair hanging loose around her shoulders. "Ready!" she crowed, all but bouncing with excitement. Gohan clung to her neck, whining pitifully, but Bulma patted his back. "Don't cry, buddy, I won't be gone long! You get to hang out with your friend while I'm gone!"

Gohan's "friend" was Kabocha, reclining in one of the chairs in the seating bay. "I'm not a brat watcher," he said with a scowl, even as Gohan laughed and reached out his grabby hands at Kabocha. But it wasn't like he could really throw the kid across the room when Bulma sat Gohan on Kabocha's knees, so instead he just crossed his arms and directed his glower at Gohan himself. Unperturbed, Gohan tottered up onto his feet on Kabocha's knee so that he could peer out the windows, swishing his tail behind him to balance.

"Look! Ships!" he crowed, pointing at their neighbors docked beside them. "More soldiers?"

"Raiders," Kabocha replied. "Dottos, it looks like."

"How d'you know?"

"The grappling arm on the front, see?"

Serori raised a brow and met by Bulma's bemused gaze. "The gentleman doth protest too much, don't you think?" Bulma asked.

Serori had no idea what Bulma was talking about, but jerked her head for Bulma to follow her down onto the dock. "If he's not careful, he'll end up with a new bunkmate."

Ochend was a small moon orbiting a gas giant. The first settlers had set up an artificial atmosphere so that people wouldn't die out on the moon's surface, but the clusters of cities still had massive bubbles established over them so that the levels of breathable gases could be held constant and reliable. Bulma, of course, found this fascinating and peppered Serori with rhetorical and seemingly unanswerable questions from the moment she first took in the sight of the vaulted dome above them.

Beyond that, she was also endlessly fascinated with the graffiti decorating the streets, doors, and alleyways of the city. Steam billowed from bathhouses, iron gates to private homes clanged among the clamor of the streets, oil sizzled in the mobile carts of street vendors. Serori had thought that the colorful and diverse population of bustling Ochend would overwhelm her, but Bulma shrugged when Serori mentioned it.

"Pretty much every group on the ship came through the medical lab at least once. Oh, look! A mechanic's shop!" Serori had to hook her hand through Bulma's elbow to keep her from running off.

"Not yet. We have a different stop to make first."

Well, first, Serori stepped into a bank and cashed out her PTO account, wincing as the bank took a healthy 15% commission for scrambling the location of the cash-out. "Lots of yous soldiers cashing out yous accounts today," the teller rasped at her while counting out the thin chips on the counter. "Guess the news is true then?"

"And here I thought Ochend knew everything," Serori replied drily.

The teller laughed a breathy laugh and slid the chips across the counter. "Stay in the black," he said, the traditional blessing of pirates and traitors across the galaxy.

"And you." Tucking the chips under the neck of her jumpsuit and into her bra, Serori led Bulma to beauty shop they passed. It wasn't as dirty as the ones they'd passed before now, but it wasn't the cleanest place they could have gone either. When on the run, corners must be cut.

Bulma looked at Serori as the soldier reached for the door handle. "What are we doing here?"

"Dyeing your hair. Frieza will be looking for a _blue-haired_ woman, right?"

In the stylist's chair, Bulma looked brave. Or, she looked like she was putting on a brave face. When the stylist put the first glop of color along her part, Bulma rolled her lips between her teeth and closed her eyes.

"Don't fret, darling," the stylist cooed. "It's gonna look lovely. You've got the most _beautiful_ skin and this color is going to look stunning on you. You got a sweetheart at home?"

Bulma laughed a bit. "You could say that."

"'I could say that'?" The colorist eyed Bulma in the mirror and used the tail of her brush to purposefully flip to a different section of hair. "You've got eyes like a fishing net. I doubt anybody you catch would be able to slip free of you."

Bulma laughed in truth now. "You make me sound like some sort of predator!"

"Oh, I know! Aren't we all?"

One hour, one color change, and six inches of hair later, Bulma pats her lavender locks while turning side to side in the mirror to look at how the ends of her hair swish around her shoulders now. "I love it," Bulma admits, a bit of disbelief coloring her tone. The stylist waggles her brows proudly, and Serori hands over the twenty credits, with an extra twenty on top.

"For your discretion," Serori explains with a benign smile.

The stylist takes the credits in the palm of her four-fingered hand and slips them into the pocket of her apron. "Thank you for your business. Stay in the black."

Out on the street, after the door closes behind them, Bulma frowns at Serori. "Do you think she'll stay silent?"

"For now." Serori peers into store fronts as they meander along. They need new clothes. These jumpsuits are comfortable as fuck but are the biggest "soldier" identifier of all. "It depends on how much money Frieza is offering for information, and how much she'll want to be on Frieza's radar in the end. She'll at least wait until we leave, for her own reputation if nothing else. It'll give us enough time to get supplies, and food, and clothes…" Serori trailed off, mouth pulling to the side as she started crunching credits in her head.

Bulma's voice broke through her thoughts. "It's going to be expensive, isn't it." It wasn't a question. Bulma played with the neck of her jumpsuit and watched their boots pace down the cracked and dirty sidewalk.

"Yes. It's going to be tight. We'll probably have to work as mercenaries before too long."

Having come to some sort of decision, Bulma jerked her head at Serori and led her into a dim alley. She fiddled with the neck of her jumpsuit again, looking this way and that to make sure that no one was watching or listening. Serori moved in front of her, blocking any bystanders' view. "What's this about?"

"You remember Roqq?"

Serori tilted her head and crinkled her brow. "Yes?"

Quickly, surreptitiously, Bulma pulled the stretchy fabric of her jumpsuit out, reached down between her breasts, and pulled out a necklace dripping in glittering firestones.

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><p>Please feel free to drop me a review! I love hearing from all of you and getting your thoughts on the plot and characters! I'm on tumblr, too - my handle is, of course, labonsoirfemme.<p>

Happy Thanksgiving!


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